Nineteen: A Truth of Red on Blue
by hokkyokukou
Summary: When they were nineteen, Kuroko was no longer with them. It was an accident that no one liked to talk about. They called it an accident, because the alternative was too horrific. But, when they were nineteen, they realized... it may not have been an accident after all. The red truth was beginning to surface no matter how much they rejected it, so they took it head on... for Kuroko.
1. Chapter 1

**Nineteen: Chapter 1**

"Frozen vegetables just never taste the same," Kagami Taiga mumbled to himself as he took the lumpy bag out from the freezer. But, he had no choice but to capitulate; there was simply not enough time to wash and chop vegetables, much less go shopping for them.

He was a very busy university student in America, after all.

As he brought out the scissors, he stuck an entire banana in his mouth, the peel falling to the floor.

"Yo, Tiger," a call came from his door. Sighing, Kagami swallowed the banana, dumped the vegetables into a frying pan and set it on high before answering whomever it was that was bothering him.

"I got your mail."

"Thanks, man," Kagami nodded, taking the envelope. Noticing that his friend was not leaving yet, he raised an eyebrow. "You need something?"

"Nah, Tiger, chill. Just… your room has a lot of stuff you brought from Japan, huh? Man, look at all those trophies! What were you, a judo champ?"

Kagami cast an eye over his room, feeling a wave of nostalgia sweep over him. "No… basketball."

"Ah, right, forgot you were on the team here."

Kagami could hear the pan sizzling. "If you don't need anything…"

"Yeah, yeah, my bad. I'll be going now. Later."

"Yeah."

Closing the door, Kagami shuffled through his mail. Junk, overdue library fines, car fine, speeding ticket, parking ticket payment overdue fine… yeah, the usual. He sighed and almost tossed the mail onto his table, but then saw an envelope he'd missed—from Japan.

"From… Kise?"

Unusual. To say the least. Hardly anyone from Japan kept in contact with him. They used to exchange emails every so often when Kagami first left for America, but eventually, that faded away, too.

And why a letter? What did Kise think he was, an old man who didn't know how to use email? Granted, Kagami _had_ thrown a couple of laptops out the window from sheer frustration because basketball streams kept buffering, but _still_.

He tore the envelope open, vegetables completely forgotten. The letter was short. His double eyebrows knitted together as he tried to read the complicated Japanese hiragana-katakana-kanji mess he hadn't used in a while.

_Kagamicchi,_

_You're so mean for leaving us all behind! _TAT_ Even though everyone has gone off to his own universities… I somehow got stuck with Midorimacchi!_ :c

"You've told me that a million times, idiot!"

_Come back to Japan as soon as you can! We gotta go visit Kurokocchi soon! It's about that time, you know? Everyone's already said that they can come, even Akashicchi and Murasakibaracchi—_

"Why is that dick's name so long?" Kagami growled after it took him five minutes to figure out that Kise had written Murasakibaracchi and not alkdjfwiohg.

_Even Akashicchi and Murasakibaracchi said that they could come all the way from the other side of Japan! Isn't that exciting? It'll be like a class reunion._

"We weren't even ever in the same class!"

_Anyway, I'm rambling too much, teehee~ You have my email, right? I lost yours, and I thought it'd be cool to write a letter in the technology era, so I bullied your address out of Izuki! Just hit me up, and I'll arrange the times for everybody._

_Ahh, Midorimacchi wants to say something, how rare!_

_Kagami, I regret to see that you are doing well. I have calculated the time it will take for this letter to reach you, and was able to get some special information for you, so be grateful, you dimwit. On that day, May 9, your sign is supposed to have the worst luck. I suggest an umbrella._

_And that's it from Midorimacchi!_

"What…"

_Later, Tigercchi! Hehe 6: (that's a smiley face with its tongue sticking out, by the way. Midorimacchi just tried to grind my head into dust, so it came out funny!)_

_Bye~_

"What a pain in the neck," Kagami growled. "Giving me a headache so early in the morning with his irritating Japanese—"

Suddenly, the sprinklers doused him with water and simultaneously, the fire alarm screeched as if its sole purpose in life was to scream Kagami's eardrums to bits. Black smoke was pouring from the kitchen.

"Mother of _god_—"

And looks like it was raining outside as everyone began running out of the building.

_I suggest an umbrella._

"Umbrella, my ass!" Kagami snarled, whisking the pan off the stove. Cue forgotten banana peel on the floor and—

Yeah, Kagami really wished he had an umbrella as the hot, burnt contents of the pan splattered onto his face. He settled for a long, drawn-out scream of anguish and pain.

* * *

_Tell Midorima to take his horoscope and his luck and whatever else he has and to screw it into a tree! And, I'll come! I have one more exam here, so after this week, I'll fly to Japan._

Kise grinned and beckoned his roommate to come look at what Kagami had just sent him. "Isn't that great, Midorimacchi?"

With a distinct _hmph_, Midorima returned to bandaging his fingers.

"Ahh~ As I thought, I really can't get along with Midorimacchi."

Kise tucked his arms behind his head and twirled around in his chair.

"Won't it be great?"

"What," Midorima grunted.

"Seeing everybody again! I already got confirmations from the rest of Kurokocchi's team that they could all come. All that's left is to set a date and then we'll all be together again!" Kise, ignoring Midorima's lack of reply, laughed and threw up his arms. "It's been so long, too! We're all already nineteen. It's been a year since everyone's been together. And a year since…"

Midorima's eyes flickered up from his task before darting back down to stare at the white bandages. The time from one year ago was a touchy subject nobody liked to talk about. If anything, everyone wanted to forget it. But, it couldn't be so. Of course. Because what had happened had happened, and the only thing to do was to deal with it. One couldn't change the past, so one had to build up on the past and use it to move forward. One could only use to past to prepare thoroughly for the future.

Though what had _that_ incident taught Midorima to prepare for? He wasn't sure. Maybe it was to never make friends again, to prevent ever feeling the pain of losing one again. Maybe it was to keep an eye on everyone he held dear to make sure they would never disappear.

Well, in any case, it taught him that Oha-Asa, as always, was to be heeded. The advice given by Oha-Asa that day… if only he had paid more attention and been more wary…

_Be careful! Watch out for your precious things, or you might end up losing them!_

"…Midorimacchi? Y-Your hand…"

Midorima blinked. There was a strange white lump where his hand should have been. He blinked again and realized that he had been so caught up in his thoughts that he'd used the whole roll of bandages to bind up his fingers and was now left with some strange-looking tumor-like object that would surely take hours to get rid of.

"You can use fire to burn it all off!" Kise suggested happily as Midorima began unwrapping his hand. His suggestion was met by a cold gaze, which clearly conveyed the idea that Midorima was _not_ going to have any more of Kise's ridiculousness so help him, God.

"…when do you think we will meet up?"

"I'm planning on the day it happened," Kise said, uncharacteristically quiet. "It seems more proper that way, you know?"

"So, then… May 19," Midorima murmured. It was a statement, not a question to which Kise nodded.

"Ahh, if only Kurokocchi… well, not like saying 'if only' will change anything," Kise said. He let his head fall back so he could smile wryly at the ceiling. "It can't change anything…"

It was a correct statement. Saying 'if only' would not change anything. It would not change the memories of that day, May 19. It would not change the _truth_ of red on bright blue. It would not change the dreams each of Kuroko's friends had of that fateful day when Kuroko's life simply…

"_Isn't that Kurokocchi up there?"_

"_Seems so. I never knew he could ride a bike."_

"_I know, right? He seems more the type to fall off as soon as he got on."_

"_That's mean, Dai-chan!"_

"_Wait—something seems weird."_

Simply…

"_What's he doing?! That idiot! The light's red!"_

"_Maybe the brakes are—the brakes aren't working?"_

"_He's going too fast—Dai-chan, you won't make it!"_

"_Shut up! At least I can try!"_

…It simply wasn't something they liked to talk about.

"_Hurry and call the ambulance, Satsuki! Aomine and Akashi won't make it, so hurry and call!"_

"Ahh, how annoying that I can't seem to get that out of my head," Kise said lightly. He could tell from Midorima's grave silence that he was having a similar experience. It wasn't something they could talk about, something they could comfort each other about. It wasn't anything that could be fixed. They could only accept it, because it had been…

"_No! Come on, Kurokocchi, wake up—come on!"_

"_Strange…"_

"_What? Akashi, you can still talk about weird things even in this sort of situation? How are you so calm?!"_

"_Calm down, Mine-chin…"_

"_No, this whole thing is strange when you think about it."_

"_Save it for later! The ambulances are here, get out of the way!"_

…it had been only an accident…

"_Stop pacing like that, Kise. It's making everyone else nervous."_

"_I need to do something! I can't just sit down and wait while Kurokocchi is—while Kurokocchi is…"_

"_What was he doing anyways, that idiot?!"_

"_Calm down, Mine-chin…"_

"_Shut it! That's the second time you've told me that today! This isn't a situation in which you just tell someone to calm down after their friend's been run over! That damn driver—I'll—"_

"_Shh, Dai-chan… it was an accident… it's no one's fault."_

"_Was it really an accident?"_

"_What's that, Aka-chin?"_

"_No… it's just that it's strange…"_

…an accident that no one liked to talk about.

"Ahh, whoever said bad things fade with time was a big fat liar!" Kise grumbled. "Hey, Midorimacchi! Let's go out to eat! Dinner's on me."

"But the test tomorrow—"

"Ah, screw it, it's just one test."

"But I must prepare—"

"Just bring ten of your lucky items tomorrow and be sure to pack your specially made rolling pencil!" Kise laughed and grabbed Midorima around the neck. Midorima protested weakly, but ultimately allowed Kise to drag him out the door.

It was an accident that no one liked to talk about because they didn't want to believe the possibility that it actually _hadn't_ been an accident.

They didn't want to consider the possibility that it had been a _suicide_…

…because if Kuroko had actually committed suicide…

…it would have been because of his friends.

Yes, it would have been his friends to drive him to the point of being suicidal and trying to take his own life. And because this was an idea so horrific and so terrible, his friends simply called it…

An _accident._

* * *

_/edit: Jul 16 because of some super embarrassing typos T.T_

_This was an idea that suddenly popped up into my head one day. I wrote half of it weeks ago, and then figured out where I wanted that half to go, and wrote the rest of this chapter, as you see it. _

_Thank you for reading!_


	2. Chapter 2

**Nineteen: Chapter Two**

"Yo, Kagamicchi!"

Kagami almost rolled his eyes at the bubbly greeting he knew could only belong to a stupid, blond boy called Kise Ryouta. As expected, when he turned, he was nearly blinded by the sun gleaming off the blond boy's hair and teeth.

But instead of scowling at the sight, Kagami smiled. It had been a long time since he had seen his old friends—his old _rivals_—and a long time since he had come back to Japan. Exactly a year.

"Yo," he said, cuffing the back of Kise's head as Kise tried to pounce on him. "It's been a while."

"It sure has been! Midorimacchi's waiting at a café—said something about how Oha-Asa said to avoid crowded places or something…"

"Still being a weirdo then, is he?"

"You got it. Come on! I have a license and just bought myself a car—"

"Just how rich are you?!"

Kise winked. "Details don't matter. You can tell me all about your college life in America! I'm so jealous you know," he added, "it must beat having Midorimacchi as a roomie."

"Just switch roommates if you hate him so much," Kagami snorted.

"Ah, ah, no, it's alright," Kise said. "I don't want to end up with a weirdo…"

"You already have."

Kise chuckled. "True. Look, there's my car!"

Kagami blinked a couple of times in utter disbelief. He could feel his eyebrows disappearing off his face; it was just how surprised and_jealous_ he was of Kise's brand new, shiny red sports car that surely cost at _least_… a big number!

Kagami wasn't one for big numbers or estimations.

Muttering something about vandalizing the car just to ruin Kise's day, Kagami loaded his luggage into the back before hopping into the shotgun, Kise right beside him.

"Crash, and I'll kill you."

Kise only smiled before he turned the key in the engine and enthusiastically went from 0 miles per hour to 80 in about as many seconds as Kagami had fingers on one hand.

"So how's America? You still playing basketball?" Kise asked casually once Kagami had ceased trying to strangle him.

"Yeah. Made the team."

Kise whistled. "Not bad."

"You?"

"…I quit," Kise admitted. "I couldn't quite… bring myself to join the team after… after well, you know."

Kagami nodded. It had been a difficult decision himself. It was only his promise to Kuroko to continue playing basketball so long as it was his passion that kept him going. As it was, he skipped practice as often as he could, just to escape the unpleasant guilt that surfaced every time he set foot on a court. He couldn't stand the feeling that rose from his stomach and bit at his throat like bile.

"Ah, we're here. Look, it's Midorimacchi. Boy, does he look mad."

Kise parked—badly—and Kagami stepped out of the car, greeting Midorima with a "Yo, weirdo."

Midorima scowled heinously. "Kise!" he barked. "This happened because of you!"

He pointed at the stain running down the entire front of his pants. Kise blinked.

"You pissed yourself because of me?"

"No! Because you dragged me to get Kagami Taiga, I bumped into a child who spilled his entire drink on me! Oha-Asa told me to stay away from crowds; I should have listened…"

"Sorry, sorry," Kise said in a tone that suggested that he was not sorry at all. "But here's Kagamicchi! You could at least say hello."

Midorima gave him a terse nod of acknowledgement.

"You need a change of clothes? I have some in my suitcase," Kagami offered. Midorima blinked, letting an expression of gratefulness cross his face before his eyebrows contorted into a scowl.

"Useful for once."

"Hey! Alright, I guess I won't lend you some extra pants."

"N-No! I-I mean, thank you very much…"

"Well, it's good that you could come, Kagamicchi," Kise said, slapping Kagami on the back as Midorima went to the restroom to change. "I was actually a little worried that you wouldn't be able to—I didn't know when your college ended or let you off for break and all."

"College for me just ended," Kagami said, shrugging. He grabbed a menu and ordered ten of everything. Kise winced.

"So, when are we all meeting up?"

"Today, actually," Kise said, checking his watch. "Since it's—you know, that day. Everyone else should be here soon."

"By everyone, you mean…"

"Just the Generation of Miracles and you. We are… well, we were the closest the Kurokocchi after all. The rest of your old team will meet up with us later."

"I should have let Midorima wear those stained pants instead," Kagami said regretfully. Kise laughed.

* * *

"So this is where Kuroko lived, huh."

The Generation of Miracles and Kagami had finally gotten together. Akashi arrived in a sleek limousine from his father's company, into which everyone piled in. They were going to the place Kuroko lived in, to meet his father, to see his room, to see where he had spent 17 years of his life.

It was a small, quiet house on the edge of town at which they arrived, surrounded by trees, hidden from direct view of the house.

"Kind of reminds you of Kuroko, the way you can't really see it right away," Midorima remarked.

"Well, let's get moving," Aomine said gruffly. "I didn't come here just to stand around some house like a stalker."

Akashi naturally took the lead, marching up to the door and ringing a dusty doorbell that looked as if it hadn't been used in a long, long time.

"You think he still lives in here? Tetsu's dad."

Aomine's question was answered when the door swung open, revealing a tired-looking man hiding behind a pair of thick glasses. He looked unsurprised to see them; or maybe it was more that he looked as if nothing else could ever surprise him again. He stared at them expectantly, but those eyes of his rendered them completely frozen, because they were _his_ eyes, _Kuroko Tetsuya's_ blue eyes, just dimmed by the thick glass of the man's spectacles.

_Blue eyes that were half open, dull, unseeing, lightless. Blue eyes with red blood running into them. Red on blue; red on bright blue._

"…Can I help you?" the man finally prompted. Akashi snapped out of his momentary shock and bowed his head a little.

"We are friends of Kuroko Tetsuya. I believe Kise Ryouta contacted you earlier this week saying that we would like to visit."

"Ah, right, I should have remembered… Come in, then."

The house inside was in shambles. Books littered the ground; old magazines lay torn up in dark corners. It was like Kuroko's father had just given up on living an organized life entirely and let the house run loose on its own.

"Do you have snacks?"

"O-Oi, Murasakibara!"

Kuroko's father cast the boy towering over him a tired, sidelong glance before moving down the hall. "I might have something… just wait a moment in the living room."

"…he's not a very happy man, is he," Kagami muttered as they turned the corner into what they thought was the living room. Devoid of almost all furniture, it was just as gloomy as the rest of the house. A spider scuttled across Kise's foot; he shrieked and grabbed Midorima, who tripped and squashed the spider under his foot. The look on the bespectacled boy's face was absolutely livid; killing spiders was a _no_ if you wanted to have good luck in life.

Luckily for Kise, Kuroko's father returned with snacks—how old were they?—in his hands, much to Murasakibara's delight.

"My name is Kuroko Taiyou," he introduced himself when they had all opened up their own small bag of pocky and sat down. "What is it that you came for?"

"We wanted to see if we could enter Tetsuya's room and take a look around," Akashi said bluntly.

"Tetsuya…?"

Though they did not think it possible, Taiyou slumped and looked even more defeated than he did at the door. The Generation of Miracles exchanged worried glances with each other, unsure of what to do. But the man let out the longest, most tired sighs they'd ever heard from anyone and got up from the floor.

"I can show you… I haven't touched anything since… well, since the accident."

So it was also an event that Kuroko's father didn't like to talk about. The boys understood, since they did not like to talk about it either. Talking about it brought up unpleasant memories…

"_God, no, Kurokocchi! Wake up!"_

"_Stop, Kise! Stop hitting him! You're only making it worse!"_

"_How can it be any worse? How can there be something worse than—oh god, are those his bones? Shit, his bones are showing through! Where are the ambulances?!"_

"Take your time to look around," Taiyou said heavily. "If you find anything you like, I guess you could take it… I'm sure he wouldn't mind, after all, since he… well…"

"I understand," Akashi said gently but firmly. "Thank you for showing us here."

Taiyou bowed and left, steps quicker than before as if he were eager to leave the spot that was so imbued with Kuroko's essence.

Indeed, the six basketball players in that room felt the urge to leave, scatter, run. Dust layered the surfaces of almost every object in the small room. The bed was neatly made as if waiting for someone to jump in and bundle up in the sheets; the curtains covered the single window of the bedroom, softening the shadows. Kuroko's large bookshelf sat adjacent to the bed; several books lay on top; one was even open, as if somebody had just been reading it…

Kuroko's schoolbag lay in front of the closet door, half open with notebooks and pens peeping out of its depths. The trashcan was empty, as if someone had just emptied it. A half-empty tissue box rested on a small, worn table on which the dust was so thick that you could have traced Kuroko's name into it. In the middle of the dust was a large picture frame.

That was all there was in Kuroko's room. It was small, and had it not been so neatly kept, it would have been shabby and poor-looking, but Kuroko seemed to have kept it well. So well, in fact, that it seemed almost as if at any moment, he could walk in, and all would be normal again.

Aomine let out a shaky breath and threw his head back. "What the heck… this just doesn't seem right at all…"

Akashi broke free of the spell Kuroko's room had cast on them. He moved to the window and whisked the curtains open. The sun hit them all in the eyes, making them wince. The shadows became more pronounced, darker, stronger.

Life began again for the basketball players as they moved slowly, quietly, delicately in Kuroko's room. The dust stirred up, but no one wanted to disrupt the seemingly frozen time by throwing open the window.

"Kuroko… sure reads—read a lot of books, huh," Kagami murmured. All the books in the shelf seemed like second-hand objects; their covers worn and dog-eared, the letters fading.

"He didn't have much other than that, though," Murasakibara said, opening the closet. "Uniform… a few casual clothes, no snacks…"

"Why would you keep snacks in the closet? Idiot," Midorima retorted.

"Now I see why he never invited us over," Aomine said. "He didn't want us to see that he didn't… have much. This is such a joke," he breathed. "It's like time never moved after that time… look at all this junk; it's like he's going to come back any second. Even still has the textbooks from the beginning of our senior year in his bag." He nodded at the bag no one wanted to disturb.

"Hey, what happened to his basketball uniform?" Kise interjected, peering under Murasakibara. "It's not in here. Everything else is—his spare uniform, some extra clothes… but no basketball uniform. Kagami, do you know about this?"

"Huh?" Kagami said, emerging from under the bed. "Oh, that… he never told you guys?"

"Told us what?"

Kagami got to his feet, brushing off the dust in his hair. He turned to the window and pushed it open. The wind blew into the room in a great gust, finally disrupting the stifling stillness of the room, disrupting the air of what was perhaps _death_ that permeated the atmosphere. It brought in the _truth_ which was that time was running, even in that room, despite what it seemed like.

Kagami turned back to the Generation of Miracles and shrugged. "He quit. He quit basketball a few months before his accident."

"What the—"

Aomine darted forward and grabbed the front of Kagami's shirt. "You idiot, why didn't you tell any of us?!"

Kagami averted his eyes.

"Didn't you ask him what was going on? You realize that Tetsu quitting basketball is something that should never have happened, right?! And that if he does, something must be terribly wrong!"

"Shut it!" Kagami burst out, slapping Aomine's grip off. "Don't you think I know that? I asked him! He didn't answer; he just disappeared and never came back!"

"What do you mean he disappeared and never came back?! You just mean to say that you forgot about him, don't you?"

"N-No! Well, that," Kagami squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing hard. "That's not completely false, but—"

"Mine-chin, calm down," Murasakibara said, easily dispatching Aomine's flailing fists with a long arm. "Kuro-chin wouldn't like it if we fought in his room."

Breathing heavily, Aomine slouched, glaring lividly at Kagami.

"I think you should explain what happened fully," Akashi said quietly. "So we can all get a better understanding of what may have happened."

"I—well, it's a long story…"

…that I don't like to tell, was what would have come after that, had Kagami the guts to say it aloud. But he didn't need to. Everyone understood. Because, everyone there in that room had something they did not want to say, did not want to think about, did not want to confess.

"Hey, look at this," Kise interrupted. "I can't believe he actually framed this."

"What?"

Kagami took a breath of relief for having extra time to collect his thoughts; the rest of them crowded around Kise, who was holding the picture frame in his hand.

"Isn't this…"

"This is from our second year, isn't it? When we all sort of worked our differences out with each other after Kurokocchi beat all our sorry asses in basketball," Kise said fondly. The layer of dust on the frame kept the others from really seeing what it was. "It was all because of that that we changed so much. It was all because of him that we got this far, isn't it… We were such asses before, but then Kurokocchi came and showed us his basketball… and we all changed. He made us realize what we really are, what we really want… and yet for him, we did nothing but hurt him…"

Kise wiped tears he didn't know he'd let fall off from the picture frame. The dust cleared. It was a group photo of Seirin's entire team and the Generation of Miracles with a few friends. They were outside a barbeque shop, where they had just thrown a celebratory party of getting into the second year of high school.

After the Winter Cup, somehow, the rest fell together. No longer were the Generation of Miracles cold people who played basketball like machines. It was true, what Kise had said: because of Kuroko, they found themselves again. Going through Teikou had beaten their personalities down to dust; they had emerged as nothing but machines made to crush and to win. But defeat after defeat broke them down, and Kuroko was the one to do that. He was the one to escape mechanization first; he was the one to save them all. He was the one to show them the _truth_, to change them back into humans—kinder, more humble, more understanding, with dreams—_real_ dreams.

"What's this?" Akashi said, taking the photo from Kise. His sharp eyes flickered across the frame. He noticed a small bump in the center of the photo, which looked as if it were something that had been stuck in between the frame and the photograph…

Without preamble, he took the frame apart. The photo fluttered out, and a heavier, folded paper fell straight to the ground. Akashi took it and, with a single glance around those around him, he unfolded it.

"…What is it?"

"…A note from Tetsuya."

Without preamble, Akashi flipped the paper around and held it up so the rest could see it. On it, in what was unmistakably Kuroko's neat writing, was written:

_Thank you. Goodbye._

* * *

"Oh, you guys have finished?" Taiyou said as the basketball players came out of Kuroko's room. "Find anything?"

Kise almost spoke, but Akashi stopped him.

"No, not really. But, if you would allow me, could I ask a few questions, Kuroko-san?"

Taiyou shrugged. He pointed at the floor. "I saw this coming. I made some tea, so sit down."

When Taiyou left, Kise turned to Akashi. "What was that all about, Akashicchi?"

"You'll see."

Soon, cups of green tea were steaming in front of each of them, seated around the worn table in the center of the living room.

"First, I want to answer what is probably one of your questions," Taiyou began. "One of you was probably going to ask me if I knew anything about the circumstances of Tetsuya's death. And the only thing I can say is that one of the officers at the scene came by my house later that day and told me that there was a possibility that… that Tetsuya's death was not an accident at all. He said that it was hard to tell from the—the wreckage whether Tetsuya's breaks had really malfunctioned, but he got some eyewitness accounts that Tetsuya got on his bike just at the top of the hill and went straight for the intersection. But everyone's stories were different, because hardly anyone noticed Tetsuya before that moment, so they were unable to conclude whether it was an accident or intentional."

"Thank you for this valuable information," Akashi said quietly, but his eyes did not match his soft tone. Rather, they were sharp, burning, almost angry. "I don't mean to be tactless, but I'd like to move onto another subject."

Taiyou looked mildly surprised, but nodded.

"Now, then, let us assume that the accident was in fact not an accident, but a suicide attempt," Akashi continued on calmly. Taiyou flinched. For a split second that no one else but Akashi noticed, his eyes darted away and then back again. "Let us say that Tetsuya was trying to commit suicide that day one year ago."

Akashi's body leaned forward, his eyes never once leaving the blue eyes so similar to Kuroko's.

"Is there anything that happened before then that could have possibly caused Tetsuya to consider death?"

Kise didn't know what Akashi was expecting, but whatever it was, he didn't get it. Kuroko's father took a deep breath and pushed his falling glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. He shook his head and said:

"…No. I don't know anything."

The glint in Akashi's eyes sharpened, but he didn't press the matter. He nodded his thanks and then motioned for the rest to leave. The tilt to his head relayed the fact that he was not at all pleased with Taiyou's answer, and the goodbye he gave in a coldly polite voice said it all.

"Thank you, Kuroko Taiyou. Please expect to see us again."

* * *

The ride to their next destination was spent in complete silence as the new revelation weighed over them. No, it wasn't a revelation. Because instinctively, they had known that it had never been an accident.

For Kuroko, for their dear friend, from the boy who saved them all, they would figure his story out. They would solve every puzzle, undo every riddle presented to them. They would dig and they would search until their fingers bled and their sights turned black.

Because, they knew that this was the only thing they could do to forgive themselves for ever letting Kuroko disappear from their lives.

The car stopped. They got out of Akashi's company limousine and filed into the tall, white building. They knew where to go; they had memorized the directions, the place, the room number, but they were never able to bring themselves to go. They skirted past the wheelchairs, the nurses, the doctors, who gave them polite nods and pointed them down the right hallways. Now, they were there; now, they were staring in silence; now, they were listening to the beeps of the nearby machines hooked up to a heartbeat.

The mechanical noises were almost comforting for the six athletes. The beeps were steady and regular. Even if they were connected to a seemingly lifeless body, they reassured that death had not claimed that boy for its own.

Life remained still in that boy.

"Yo, Tetsu," Aomine greeted quietly. "It's been a while, but you're still sleeping huh?"

Aomine moved to the bedside and rested his hand on the bright blue hair that fell across a pale face. The strands barely moved under the small, shallow breaths Kuroko Tetsuya took as he slept.

* * *

_Edit 7/23 because of so many embarrassing typos (again) TAT_

_In case it's not clear (it will be made clear in the next chapter, but nobody would want to wait for clarifications) Kuroko is in the hospital and in a coma._

_Thank you for the feedback! Every review, follow, and favorite is much appreciated. If there is anything I can do better, please let me know. This is still a sort of pilot until I get all that I've written out (one more chapter), so if you like it, leave a review/follow/favorite so I know to continue :)_

_Thanks, and have a nice day! :)_

_Have a nice day!_


	3. Chapter 3

_The flashback is indicated by 17, the age Kuroko was when it took place._

* * *

**Nineteen: Chapter Three**

"Oh? You guys are already here?"

The shooting expert and former captain of Seirin High's basketball team, Hyuuga, was standing at the door, the rest of the senior members behind him. He strode in. On the stand next to Kuroko, there was a vase of barely wilted flowers. Hyuuga took it and replaced the flowers with the ones he had just brought.

"Yeah, we got here a little early," Aomine answered as Hyuuga threw out the old flowers. "You guys… come here often?"

"Not all of us," Hyuuga said. "Just me and Mitobe occasionally. We go to university around here, and since we're pretty much the only people that visit Kuroko, we figured we should go all the way."

Teppei nodded. "I come visit him every time I visit home. Koganei and Izuki do, too; our breaks coincide with each other."

"His father doesn't visit?" Akashi inquired.

Hyuuga shook his head. "Not as far as I've heard. But, anyways," he said, striding forward. Kagami tripped forward as an enormous slap landed on his back. "Good to see you're doing well, Kagami!"

"Y-yeah."

"C'mon, why are all you so gloomy?" Riko barked. "Let's go get something to eat, all of us! And cheer up, already! It's like we're visiting someone who almost got murdered or something."

Kise visibly winced. The other members of the Generation of Miracles and Kagami managed to control themselves. Riko Aida did not know how close her words were to being truth. With a backwards glance at Kuroko, they all filed out of the hospital room and to the nearest restaurant.

In the middle of what seemed almost like a festival, five text ringtones went off. While the others cheered and clinked glasses together and gorged on barbeque, the Generation of Miracles and Kagami switched on their phones to see that Akashi had texted them.

_[After we all leave, meet up in the nearby courts.]_

* * *

They were at the designated courts now, which Kagami found to be tremendously nostalgic. These courts were the ones on which he had played Kuroko for the first time—when he had found out that Kuroko was horrendously awful at basketball and when Kuroko had declared he would make Kagami number one in Japan.

It felt good but at the same time terrible to be here again. Kagami wondered what it would be like if Kuroko were well and standing next to him on this court. His gaze wandered as he listened to Akashi.

"At the time, I thought it strange," Akashi said heavily. "What I saw that day did not match up with what was happening. Because I had started running with Aomine to try to get to Kuroko before he reached the intersection, I was, at the last few moments, able to get a clear view of him. And what I saw… did not match up with the later claims of it being an accident."

Kise had a sharp intake of breath. "You're joking… you can't mean that…"

Akashi was silent, leaving it to the rest of them to figure out what he meant. It wasn't hard. Putting together Akashi's Emperor's Eye and the fact that Kuroko was wearing summer clothes, there was only one logical conclusion.

"So you're saying… you didn't see Tetsu trying to stop?"

"That is correct. Normally, people whose brakes have jarred would be trying to get them to work, would they not? Muscle strain would be indicated here, as they tried to stop their bicycle. I saw none of this as Tetsuya went down the hill. Either he had given it up for a lost cause or…"

"…or it was a suicide," Kise finished. Breathing out, he threw back his head. "He could have just jumped off the bike at the last second too, if he truly saw that there wasn't any hope of stopping his bike. So it was definitely a… a suicide, huh?"

With the near confirmation of a suicide, they were gravely silent.

Suddenly Aomine broke out into laughter. "This is pathetic. We're pathetic. All the answers could have been in our hands if we had just used our heads a bit, but we insisted that it'd been an accident… and for what? For the longest time, we just played dumb—especially you!"

Aomine grabbed the front of Akashi's shirt, anger lighting his face. "You saw all of this, but you never said anything! Why!? You—you who always parades about how since you always win, you're always right. Why didn't you tell the rest of us immediately? Why did you hide it?"

Akashi brushed Aomine's grip off easily, but he made no move to reprimand him.

"Because I don't always win anymore," he said quietly. "If you hadn't noticed. Not since Tetsuya finally beat me in the Winter Cup. Not then, not the year after, not when my father took me away to America. After my first loss, the balance of my life was disrupted, and I was forced to begin to make concessions, to look at things under a different light, to hold myself differently—to go back partially to how I was when I first entered Teikou. Because of Tetsuya, I'm not absolute anymore. Because it was Tetsuya on that bike, I was not confident in what I should have believed. And perhaps, more than anything… because it was Tetsuya, I wanted to be wrong this time.

"Yes, Daiki, as you put it, I played dumb. I suspected it. You know I did."

"_Shh, Dai-chan… it was an accident… it's no one's fault."_

"_Was it really an accident?"_

"_What's that, Aka-chin?"_

"_No… it's just that it's strange…"_

"_What's so strange? What, are you thinking it was a murder?"_

"_No, it wasn't a murder. I am certain of that. Sabotage is out of the question. But suicide…"_

"_What are you talking about? You crazy asshole! Tetsu would never do something—something like that, would he? Would he?"_

"Perhaps I am more human than all of you consider me to be. I know that none of you wanted to consider the possibility of Tetsuya's accident being a suicide attempt… That would have raised severe complications and what people call 'survivor's guilt' within each of us. Instinctively, we avoided this alternative to save ourselves from the additional pain that would have come with the regret of not being able to save Tetsuya in time… So, am I really the only one to blame?"

Aomine tsked and turned away savagely. "You're right. You're always right. How am I not surprised?"

Akashi was right. They were all to blame. That was what every single one of them was thinking. It was their fault for not saving Kuroko. It was their fault for not seeing that he needed help. It was their fault that they couldn't realize he was about to commit suicide. The egocentricity claimed them, causing them to think that the blame lay within themselves, being the closest to Kuroko.

The guilt was immense. In retrospect, each of them could see the signs, though they were few. A few spoken words—

"_You know, I wonder sometimes if anybody would notice if I disappeared from this world."_

"_What's that, Tetsu? You gotta speak up if you want people to listen to you. What'd you say?"_

"…_Nothing. It's fine."_

The accidents that happened—

"_Akashi-kun, I am so sorry. This is my fault—everything I do these days just seems to backfire—everything I do these days just seems to cause other people pain and trouble…"_

The circumstances—

"_I heard his mother committed suicide just a month ago as well?"_

"How could we not have _seen_," Kise whispered. "If we'd just taken a closer look, we could have helped him…"

"Perhaps we could have," Akashi said. His eyes were fixed on the blue sky—_blue, like Tetsuya's hair_—but unseeing. "With this realization," Akashi said, "I believe that we all now carry a sense of responsibility of finding out what happened to Tetsuya that drove him to suicide. I am sure we all have our own conjectures, but the best way to do this is properly, step by step. First, I believe we start with Kagami," he continued, his heterochromatic eyes settling on the double-eyebrowed boy. "Since Tetsuya quitting basketball is the biggest lead we have right now, that should be our starting point."

Kagami looked as if he were a prisoner being sent to the execution chair. He sighed and rubbed the back of his head.

"Alright. Everyone from Seirin knows this story anyways. I don't know if it'll help figure things out, because even looking back now, I can't tell what it was that made him quit. It happened November of second year, right in the middle of Winter Cup. We were in the quarter finals."

* * *

**17**

"There it is again! The Ignite Pass Kai! Just how many times can this boy do it?! And of course, as always, that number 10 catches it without fail—and there's the dunk! The Meteor Jam! Seirin is now in the lead, 47-46!"

The crowd was going wild because Seirin was up against one of the newly proclaimed best teams of the region. The match was indeed intense; everyone was on the edge of their seats, shouting profanities and encouragement and throwing their hands into the air or groaning whenever a shot was made. The score was so low even in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter because each team's offense and defense were so aggressive that either side could barely step forward. Most the shots were made thanks to Kuroko's Ignite Pass and Kagami's unstoppable dunks, the majority of which had only been made in the fourth quarter.

"And that invisible number 11 seems to have made another steal, because even though we didn't see it, the ball is out of Seki's hands, and—oh, that was a close one! The ball went back to the end of Seirin's court and can it be—yes, number 10 is already on the offensive! Here it comes! The Ignite Pass Kai! Is this the tenth time? The eleventh?"

"Good job, Kuroko!" Kagami slapped Kuroko on the back, hand coming away damp because of the perspiration. "Can you keep it up a little while longer?"

Kuroko nodded. "Only just a little bit."

"Great. Let's go!"

"And they're off again! Seki takes the ball, and that enormous number 3 is going in all the way—but what's this?! He's being guarded by that unnoticeable number 11! Will this work? Number 3 is unfazed; he's going in for the kill and—oh my lord!"

The crowd screamed.

"The poor boy—it seems number 3 tripped when he ran into his own teammate and sent number 11 flying—a closer look—is he bleeding?"

"Kuroko! Kuroko, are you alright?"

Pale faced, Kuroko shook his head. He struggled to sit up, but couldn't. His hand was bent at an unnatural angle.

"Ambulance! We need an ambulance! Don't get up, just stay down."

Kuroko closed his eyes, biting the insides of his cheeks until they bled to stop from screaming in the pain. He could feel his consciousness slipping and almost submitted, wanting to escape from the white-hot pain.

"Alright, the medics are here."

"He seems to have had an impact to his head… an awful lot of blood… Sir, we'll have to ask you to stay back."

"What? No, I'm coming with him!"

Kuroko's eyes flew open.

"Kagami-kun, you can't—the match—"

Had Kuroko not been injured, Kagami would have jabbed him. "Idiot! As if I care about the match more than my friend! I'm not leaving you until I know that you're OK."

"No, but—it's important that—Kagami-kun, you should stay—This is your last tournament. I'll be fine. Please," he said loudly when Kagami opened his mouth to protest. "Do it for me."

What could he do against those words? _Do it for me_. Kagami gritted his teeth.

"Fine! You! You had better make sure he comes out alright! Or I'll hunt you down and make you regret ever being born!"

"S-Sir, is that a death threat?"

"Yes! So put everything you have into taking care of him, you hear me?"

"…yes, sir. Let's go!"

* * *

"And then?" Midorima prompted when Kagami stopped speaking.

"Ah, just let a person breathe for a moment, will you?" Kagami grumbled. "We ended up winning the match, and as soon as it was over, I ran over to the hospital to see how Kuroko was doing. I had to wait for about an hour because they wouldn't allow visitors or some crap rule like that until the doctor came out and let me sneak in. Kuroko said he was fine; it was just a minor fracture and it would heal up in a month or so…

"He came to practice every day, just to watch and to try to give us tips. We had about a week before semi-finals, and we practiced late every day and even went to camps. He came with us everywhere, saying something about how even though he couldn't play with us, he still wanted to give us his support. We promised him we'd win the Winter Cup for him, but in the end… In the end, we let him down. You guys know how it turned out. In the finals, Rakuzan played against Kaijou."

"So did he stop coming to practice after that?"

"Well, there wasn't much practice after our loss, since the Winter Cup was the last tournament. Our senpai had to study for University… We held practice occasionally, and Kuroko kept on coming for the first month, but then… In January, after we came back from winter break, he never showed up."

"What do you mean 'he never showed up'?"

Kagami shook his head. "He just never showed up. After a few days, Riko-senpai said she'd gotten a notice of resignation from him. After that, nobody saw him, not even in the school. It was like he'd just disappeared off the face of the earth. When he really wants to be, he becomes absolutely invisible. It's almost scary. From then till graduation ceremony, I never caught sight of him."

"So you stopped looking for him?" Aomine growled. "What the hell?"

"I looked!" Kagami snapped. "How else do you think I know that he can really just disappear off the face of the earth like it's nothing? I tried texting him, emailing him, finding him in school, but I could never do it! Asking people didn't help either, because nobody ever notices him! After two months of that, what else can you do? What would you have done?"

Aomine's eyes widened.

"Enough," Akashi cut in before anyone could say anything more. "It's getting late. We'll continue this discussion later. Be careful on your way back. I'll text you all when we should meet up again."

Feeling extremely dissatisfied with the day's results, the others grumbled but slowly dispersed until only Midorima remained beside Akashi after he told Kise to go on ahead. His glasses gleamed briefly as he pushed them up his nose.

"What are you thinking, Akashi?"

"Daiki has something to say about Tetsuya. It probably has something to do with his accident that year."

"The accident? You mean the time Aomine broke a rib saving Kuroko?"

"That's right. Also, Shintarou, am I correct in assuming you are free tomorrow morning?"

"Why so suddenly…?"

"Oh, I just wanted to pay Tetsuya's doctor a little visit and wanted some company," Akashi said.

"…unannounced?"

He smiled deviously. "Is there a problem with that?"

Midorima only sighed.

With a soft chuckle, Akashi turned and began walking away, and Midorima almost immediately fell into step. It was like the Teikou days again—with a little bit of imagination, he could feel the rest of the team around him, following in Akashi's footsteps as his sports jacket whirled around his shoulders. Half of him missed those days; half of him was relieved he'd finally escaped.

And his escape was all because of Kuroko. Midorima wondered if Akashi felt the same way.

Kuroko, Kuroko. Those words from that day still rang in Midorima's head, like the irritating buzz of a be or whine of a mosquito. He half blamed himself for Kuroko's death, even though he knew that such blame was irrational. But he had been so materialistically oriented that day that he hadn't even realized that the vague noun 'things' could have meant so much more…

_Be careful! Watch out for your precious things, or you might end up losing them!_

It should have been clear with the announcement of the lucky item.

_Your lucky item today is a cellphone! Keep it close!_

Yet, he had been blind…

"Stop blaming yourself, Shintarou," Akashi said quietly. Midorima jerked, blinking before he realized that they were standing in front of a tall hotel in which Akashi must be staying. How long had he been spaced out? He was lucky to not have gotten run over while crossing the streets.

"How… did you know?"

"It's only a natural reaction to begin blaming yourself for the suicide of someone close to you."

_Someone close to you. You didn't think it could be someone 'close to you' that you would end up losing that day, did you Midorima Shintarou?_

"Plus, it's easy to tell from your expression and the way you didn't respond to me when I called you."

"Y-You did?"

Akashi nodded. "Twice."

Letting out a sigh of exasperation, Midorima pushed his glasses up. "It's just… that day, if I'd followed Oha Asa's advice…"

"What could you have done?" Akashi asked bluntly. So bluntly, that it almost hurt. He turned around so that his mismatched eyes were looking into Midorima's.

"Even if you'd understood Oha Asa's predictions correctly, could you have changed anything? Even if you had somehow saved Kuroko that day, couldn't he have ended up taking his own life on another? In the end, Shintarou, it is easy to understand that on your side, there lies no blame. Unless you are hiding something from us that will implicate you, misunderstanding advice dispensed by Oha Asa does not incriminate you. This is the truth."

Akashi sighed heavily. He turned his eyes to the star-specked sky. His red hair ruffled in the soft wind that was stealing warmth from Midorima's skin.

"Advice is only that: advice. Oha Asa does not know your future, Shintarou. You should not allow it to dictate your life. 'Leave it up to fate,' you always say. Doesn't that become unbearably restricting, not being able to create your own future? Take it into your own hands. Didn't Tetsuya teach you at least that?"

Midorima's eyebrows contracted, forming a small line in his forehead. "Akashi…"

The red-head turned away, the light of his mismatched irises disappearing as he closed his eyes. "I've spoken too much. It is a sensitive subject for me. I apologize, Shintarou."

"No… but, sensitive?"

Akashi allowed a small smile to rise to his lips, but Midorima could see nothing but fatigue and frustration in that small curve of his mouth.

"It'll be a story I'll tell everyone another day. But for now… It's late. Get some rest, Shintarou, and expect a message from me early in the morning."

"Right…"

Bidding goodbye to Midorima, Akashi headed inside the enormous hotel, going straight to the room he had rented out for the week. Without undressing, he stretched out on the bed, arms behind his head as his eyes stared unseeingly into the dark.

_"…At least let me have my freedom at school."_

Pre-determination, fate, destiny… he used to think like that. For him, his future was always _I am right, I will win._ He thought that by always winning, he was taking a hold of his own life and shaping it as he pleased, but now, he saw that it was not that at all. Instead, he was letting his mindset of never losing run his life until it turned him into a machine that only knew how to be right. He had imprisoned himself, and his way of becoming free was only caging himself up even more. And that was the truth Kuroko had shown him.

_"You… maybe it's time you free yourself from that cage you built around yourself, Akashi-kun."_

Akashi closed his eyes. That was another story for another day. For now, he needed to get his rest to prepare himself for what was to come in the following week. There was only one week in which he could solve the puzzle, break the pattern. And in that one week, he promised himself, he would find the truth.

He promised on his own pride that when Kuroko woke up again, the world would be right. When Kuroko woke up again, he wouldn't regret being still alive.

By the time Kuroko opened his eyes, Akashi swore that the world would make sense once again. It was the least he could do for the boy he had thrust into the shadows.

It was the least Akashi could do for the boy who had dragged Akashi out of the dark.

* * *

_"Your past is always your past. Even if you forget it, it remembers you."_

* * *

**Last Prelude**

**/Begin**

Nobody ever asked how it happened.

They didn't question the truth they saw of red on bright blue painted on the pavement.

They didn't see it coming.

They didn't see the boy until it was too late; such was his nature to go unnoticed.

As he came up the hill on his bike, he was nearly invisible to all eyes.

As he mounted his bike at the top of the hill, he drew no attention.

As he kicked off, straight downhill, no one noticed.

It was only until there was a _honk,_ a _screech_ that he was finally seen.

But by then it was too late.

Because all that was left was red on bright blue…

Afterwards, they didn't question the statements that it had been an accident.

The story? Kuroko Tetsuya, a seventeen-year old boy of Seirin High had been riding his bicycle down the hill when his brakes stalled and he lost control of his bike. He headed straight into the intersection, and was unfortunately hit by a truck.

It was a simple case, a simple accident; an accident no one close to him liked to talk about, but was the subject of gossip of the citizens of that town.

"_An unlucky child from the start…"_

"_From a poor family as well. What a pitiful child."_

"_I heard his mother committed suicide just a month ago as well?"_

"_Yes, it's true."_

"_She got drunk and hung herself, didn't she?"_

"_Yes. No one ever found out why, though."_

"_I'm glad I told my children to never play with that boy. Nothing good ever comes from a family like that."_

It was the hot topic for a week before people began forgetting. And forgetting was one thing they did well. The talk of the accident progressed into the rumors of recent sexual assaults at a certain high school and of sports and sales. The boy Kuroko Tetsuya and his miserable fate were quickly erased from the minds of those who did not know him. The one time he was thrust into the center of attention was when he almost died; then he was forgotten as quickly as artificial light faded when it is switched off.

But of the others who had held him dear, they did not so easily forget. In fact, they were not sure if they could ever forget. They had seen him get hit; they saw his body; they saw him loaded into the ambulance while he dripped blood everywhere. They saw the wreckage, the gore; they were the first ones at the scene.

They saw it all, and they would not forget.

It has been a year, and they found themselves in University. Time continued, herding their broken, confused minds into the future. They asked themselves why it had been Kuroko Tetsuya, why it had happened, why nobody had seen that something was wrong. They wondered what things would have been different had he not suddenly vanished from their lives like that. They hurt, and they cried, and they stood, nursing the wounds in their hearts and minds. Such a horrific sight they tried to forget, but for them, it was not so easily let go.

The past does not easily let go.

**Last Prelude**

**/End**

* * *

_Quote by Sarah Dessen._

_So ends the three-chapter pilot. Thank you for all your support! I really appreciate each and every sign of it. Since I got more feedback than expected, I'll be continuing this story!_

_And haha, I never said straight up that Kuroko was dead! If you go back and re-read, you'll notice that I always refer to Kuroko's incident as 'the accident' or something along those lines, not his 'death.'_

_I apologize for all OOCness, etc. My first time writing for Kuroko, and I'm a little nervous as to how everyone is being portrayed! I'm trying to aim for a mix of their personalities from high school and middle school._

_A reply to a couple of reviews:_

To be truthful, Kuroko at first WAS going to be dead and stay that way, and the rest of this story would have a super tragic ending where Kagami and the rest would find out the truth, but even then, nothing would change since, well... Kuroko's dead. And then they'd maybe be standing in front of his grave at the end with the wind blowing and the rain pouring and everyone saying sorry Kuroko sorry sorry sorry that nothing can be fixed and then the end goodbye.

But I decided that if Kuroko _was_ going to die, I wanted it to be in a different (more terrifying) way. Yes, I am a complete sadist. :D

_Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!_


	4. Chapter 4

"_Why_ did you follow us home, Aomine Daiki."

As he posed this prickly question, Midorima Shintarou stood formidably in front of the door to the room he shared with Kise. Aomine tried ducking into the room, but Midorima caught his face in a crushing grip. Yelping, Aomine bounced away.

"Geez, Midorima! It's just one night until I find somewhere cheap to stay."

"I forbid it," Midorima sternly said. "One useless person is enough!"

"Hey!" Kise pouted, poking his head out. "For that, you get this!"

With a _'hi-ya!' _Kise kicked Midorima in the small of the back, sending him flying, and Aomine quickly hopped into the room. Muttering furiously, Midorima slammed the door shut and walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

"Intrusions aside," Kise said, plopping down on the genuine leather couch he'd bought with his own money, "it was really nice seeing everyone together again! It brought back memories…"

"Not nice ones," Aomine snorted.

"What? Did you hate us so much?"

Aomine scoffed and smacked Kise in the face by accident as he waved his hand around airily. "Middle school sucked. The first time we met after graduation, Akashi tried to stab Kagami in the face. And then, the last time we met… was the day Tetsu…"

He fell silent. He didn't need to finish the sentence, and he didn't want to.

Clearing his throat, Midorima cast an eye around the kitchen. His nose wrinkled. The dishes needed cleaning.

"But, anyways, Midorimacchi! What did you and Akashicchi talk about after we all left?"

"Nothing to worry your fluff-for-brains over."

"Mean!"

Aomine started laughing.

"Man, you two really haven't changed at all after middle school."

"You haven't either!" Kise pouted. "Well, no, that's…"

"Completely untrue," Aomine finished. He sighed and leaned back with his hands threaded behind his neck, enjoying the feel of the expensive couch. "Yeah, yeah, you don't have to be shy about saying it. I know I was a complete dick in middle school and in my first year of high school."

"You were…"

"Don't say it so frankly!" Aomine said, cuffing Kise on the back of his head.

"But you just said—"

As the two of them bickered, Midorima got ready for bed, following his usual routine that would guarantee him a good night's sleep. And knowing Aomine and Kise—he would need all the luck he could get in order to be able to sleep even a wink. Well, he would just prepare, as usual, and let fate decide the rest—

"_Oha Asa does not know your future, Shintarou. You should not allow it to dictate your life. 'Leave it up to fate,' you always say. Doesn't that become unbearably restricting, not being able to create your own future? Take it into your own hands. Didn't Tetsuya teach you at least that?"_

His hand paused, hovering just above his toothpaste. He shook his head. He didn't want to think about it right then. He quickly finished brushing his teeth and then shut himself in his room, inserting earplugs into his ears to muffle the crashing sounds coming from the living room where, no doubt, Kise and Aomine were romping around.

"Children…" Midorima huffed.

It was only 9; there was still quite a bit of time before Midorima's usual bedtime. He woke up his laptop and opened up a search engine though he wasn't positive what he wanted to look up. His fingers tapped absently on the desk, and then he knew—

_What would you like to search?_

_COMA_

He scrolled down the search results until he found what he was looking for.

_A coma rarely lasts more than 2 to 4 weeks. The outcome for coma depends on the cause, severity, and site of the damage. People may come out of a coma with physical, intellectual, and psychological problems. Some people may remain in a coma for years or even decades. For those people, the most common cause of death is infection, such as pneumonia._ [ ]

"…Decades?"

_Comas are caused by an injury to the brain. Brain injury can be due to increased pressure, bleeding, loss of oxygen, or buildup of toxins. The injury can be temporary and reversible. It also can be permanent._

_Trauma: Head injuries can cause the brain to swell and/or bleed. When the brain swells as a result of trauma, the fluid pushes up against the skull. The swelling may eventually cause the brain to push down on the brain stem, which can damage the RAS (Reticular Activating System) - a part of the brain that's responsible for arousal and awareness. _

_The chances of a person's recovery depend on the cause of the coma, whether the problem can be corrected, and the duration of the coma. If the problem can be resolved, the person can often return to his or her original level of functioning. Sometimes, though, if the brain damage is severe, a person may be permanently disabled or never regain consciousness._

… _Comas that result from head injuries tend to have a higher rate of recovery than comas related to lack of oxygen._ [webmd]

_Comas seldom last longer than several weeks. People who are unconscious for a longer period of time may transition to a persistent vegetative state. Depending on the cause of coma, people who are in a persistent vegetative state for more than one year are extremely unlikely to awaken._ [mayoclinic]

Midorima had to close his eyes and take a deep breath. So this was the situation Kuroko was in. He had been in a coma already for one year. Was he…

Was he ever going to wake up?

Unable to continue, Midorima shut his laptop and rolled into bed, carefully taking his glasses off with the correct hand and in the correct position. He tried to drown out the accusatory voices in his head—_your fault, your fault—_by reciting historical facts and medical terms, but somehow, his thoughts always wound up centered on Kuroko and Oha-Asa's words from that day…

It was hard falling asleep, and by the time his mind was drifting off, Kise and Aomine had long quieted down.

* * *

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

Groaning, Midorima reached for his cell phone to shut it up. Thankfully, he remembered that Akashi said he would be contacting him early in the morning and checked his phone. He didn't want to think about what Akashi would do to him if he missed the appointment.

_[Meet me at the hospital at 7:30. –Akashi]_

Midorima carefully got out of bed after slipping on his glasses with his right hand. Nobody else was up—as expected; it was only 6:35 after all. After taking a shower, he quietly made himself breakfast. He rather enjoyed the quiet time in the wee hours of the morning, when there was no annoyingly boisterous Kise around to bother him.

When he was done, he dumped the dishes in the sink. Reconsidering, he pulled a piece of paper from the small stack they had on the counter and wrote a nice message for Kise to leave on the refrigerator.

_Kise. Your fortune today says that the dishes need cleaning._

Grabbing his phone, wallet, and a few other necessary items (like today's lucky item, a camera), he left the apartment.

He plugged his headphones in time to hear Ohayo Asahi's cheerful voice saying:

"_For cancers, today is not such a lucky day! You are ranked number seven; be careful! Take control of your own life today and do what you think is right or you'll be regretting it! Take a different route home; it might be good to drop by someplace on a whim! Your lucky item for today: a camera!"_

Sighing, Midorima immediately began planning for a new way back as he boarded the bus headed towards the hospital. After thirty minutes, he was almost there when he got a second text message from Akashi.

_[Never mind. Your presence is not needed here. Take your time in getting home; I'll be texting everyone for another meeting tonight after I extort information from the doctor. –Akashi]_

Midorima stared dumbly at the message. The bus was stopping.

"Truly, Oha-Asa is always right."

He decided to get off at the next stop, not really wanting to risk seeing Akashi's face at the moment.

"Now then… where should I go?"

He wandered around a bit around the streets. None of the shops were open; it was too early. Instead, he caught sight of a few kids looking tired and mournful as they dragged their feet on the pavement. They were wearing blue and black uniforms, which hit a switch in Midorima's memory—hadn't that been Kuroko's uniform?

Suddenly, he felt an urge to visit the place where Kuroko had attended for three years of his life.

"…Oha-Asa truly knows all."

Not wanting to seem like a pervert or a suspicious person, Midorima briefly considered knocking one of the taller students out to steal their uniform before he realized what he was thinking. He huffed, pushed his glasses up his nose, and strode down the sidewalk. If he infiltrated Seirin, it would be honestly and with pride.

Inadvertently, he caught snippets of a conversation two preoccupied girls were having.

"…you hear?"

"You mean the sexual assaults? Yeah, but they're just rumors, you know… don't act so scared."

"Don't lie! You're scared too!"

Midorima frowned. He always knew Seirin was an unworthy school. He followed the girls until he saw the school gates and then turned on his heel. With eight hours to kill, he decided to take up temporary residence in a small, almost invisible bookshop that had a small coffee corner.

Finally, it was time for school to let out its small prisoners. Midorima swiftly jogged to the front gates and slipped in as the hordes of high schoolers swarmed out or to their clubs. He stayed far, far away from the gymnasium. He himself hadn't touched a basketball for a few months, not since the last Winter Cup.

"Excuse me, sir, are you a student here?"

A teacher. Midorima sighed impatiently.

"No. I used to attend this school, but am now studying at university," Midorima lied easily. "I just wanted to come back and have a look around."

"Ah! Your name?"

"…Kuroko. Kuroko Tetsuya."

"Eh… did we have a student like that?" the teacher mused.

"I've… changed a lot since I graduated."

The teacher smiled. "I see! We have a lot of students like that, so I'm not surprised. Well, take your time, Kuroko-kun. Seirin is always glad to see its former students."

With a jolly wave, the teacher skipped away. Midorima, expression stony, pushed his glasses up his nose and continued into the main building.

The halls were mostly empty as he wandered around aimlessly. A few classrooms were filled with clubs, but aside from that, it was mostly empty. He ascended the steps to the second floor, where the second-year classes were held, trying to progress sneakily since he didn't want to interact with people if he could help it.

One of the classrooms he was passing by was once Kuroko's—a strange thought. A couple years ago, Kuroko had passed down this hallway, sat down in one of the desks, was completely alive… Midorima shook his head.

He let his feet lead him to the third floor, which was, expectedly, packed with the third-year classrooms. None of the classes on this floor were being used at the moment; most of them were dark with the doors closed or locked. He guessed the teachers were in the lounge somewhere.

He found the library tucked away at the end of the hall and spent some time loitering around the Literature Club as they enthusiastically discussed pornographic novels.

About a half-hour had passed as Midorima browsed random books. Before he knew it, he was headed out the library again.

The classrooms on this floor elicited from him an even stranger reaction. Just a year ago, Kuroko was taking notes in one of them… just a year ago, Kuroko was possibly suffering alone as life around him went on in this school. On this floor, perhaps things had happened to him that accumulated and prompted him to suicide… Midorima shook his head again, trying to clear his thoughts.

One of the classroom doors was slightly ajar while the room itself was completely dark. He gravitated to it, feeling strangely drawn. His steps softened as a feeling of tension rose in him; he had a feeling he was intruding on something for some reason, but on what, he didn't know…

"Nn!"

The material of the pornographic novels the Literature Club had just been discussing still fresh in his head, Midorima's mind instantly jumped to the gutter. He jarred to a stop, breaking out into a sweat as he sternly reprimanded himself for being such a perverted boy.

"A-Ah—No—nn…"

He blinked rapidly.

"Shh…"

"Ah! P-please, stop…"

Maybe he was right for being a perverted boy.

Midorima's eyes darted wildly behind the lenses. For some reason, his body would not move. What should he do? The people inside the classroom were obviously engaging in an act that should not be done at school, and rather badly at that! If you were going to do something, at least do it where no one could hear you! Actually, just don't do it at school! Or even better, don't do it at all! The world population is growing too much anyways!

There was a sound like the blinds being hit on the window; sunlight rushed in, momentarily illuminating the two people inside. Midorima couldn't help looking. His eyes widened.

A female student.

A male teacher.

His eyebrows popped up to his hairline. Wasn't this illegal? Shouldn't the teacher get fired for this? Moreover, the girl did not look as if she were having a particularly good time… was the teacher just spectacularly bad at sex? Or was it something else…

Shaking his head, he turned and quickly made an escape. The smallest part of his mind screamed at him to use his camera to take a photo with flash to obtain incriminating evidence so that he could evict the heinous teacher from his post, but the rest of his mind told him to please, please, _please_ walk away from the mind-scarring location with all due haste. He was almost out of the school when he finally remembered with a jolt what he had heard that morning.

"…_you hear? I thought they stopped after last year…"_

"_You mean the sexual assaults? Yeah, but they're just rumors, you know… don't act so scared."_

"_Don't lie! You're scared too!"_

"Crap!"

He looked down at the camera in his hands and cursed himself.

"Oha-Asa is truly always right!"

He turned and in a flash was sprinting up the stairs, three at a time. Not five minutes had passed, but when he got to the classroom and threw open the door and flung the lights on, it was completely empty. He had missed his chance.

"Damn!"

He went to the front office, but no one was there. Instead, he left a little note shouting in angry handwriting, '_ONE OF YOUR TEACHERS IS ENGAGING IN FORCED SEXUAL ACTS WITH HIS STUDENTS. CLASSROOM 3-4 WAS WHERE I SAW THEM. PLEASE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.'_

Huffing angrily about this school—Kuroko should never have come here—Midorima took his leave and almost boarded the bus back home before he remembered Oha-Asa's advice. With that day's events in mind, he didn't care about what Akashi said. He flagged down a taxi and ordered the driver to make three loops around the school before going to his apartment, and the poor bewildered driver made three loops around the school before heading onto the main street.

At least one thing was going right today. Midorima sighed as he readjusted his glasses.

What a terrible, terrible day.

* * *

"Thank you for gathering, all of you, at the last minute notice."

This time, they were at an empty playground. Kise and Aomine had taken the swings captive, while Murasakibara took over the sandbox and tried making a sandcastle. Kagami swung on the monkey bars, and Midorima stood by Akashi, who was luckily not doing anything obscenely childish.

"This better be good," Aomine yawned.

Akashi folded his arms. "I can't tell. So far, I haven't gotten anything from it."

"Well, what is it?" Murasakibara intoned, pulling open a bag of potato chips.

Akashi sighed. "I went to see the doctor that treated Tetsuya when he got injured in the Winter Cup."

Kagami sputtered. "How'd you find out who it was?"

"I have my connections." Akashi shrugged. "And all it took was a little poking around and manipulation, and I found out quickly and with ease."

Kagami looked a little more than frightened.

"Anyways… luckily, the man didn't have any early-morning appointments, so I managed to ask him a few questions before his first patient got in. And, before you ask, Kagami Taiga," Akashi added as Kagami opened his mouth, presumably to ask how Akashi had gotten permission to barge into the doctor's office, "I have connections."

"Or more like all the women these days swoon as soon as they slap their eyes on you," Aomine muttered darkly.

"He didn't have trouble recalling Tetsuya," Akashi said, ignoring Aomine. "He told me the story as well as he could remember it…"

* * *

**17**

When Kuroko next opened his eyes, his arm was in a cast and his head was throbbing dully, as if the painkillers were not having a very big effect. He sat up, white lights popping in his vision as the blood rushed from his head, leaving him woozy.

"Ah, you're up? Do you remember what happened?"

Blinking a few times, Kuroko managed to get his vision to focus on the doctor smiling at him.

"…I got injured in a basketball match. Was it bad?"

The doctor's smile faltered a little. He pulled out a clipboard.

"It seemed you were flung into the base of the pole holding up the hoop. Well, the concussion wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, your arm got stuck under you, and that's where the wrist comes into play."

Kuroko's mouth was suddenly dry. He suddenly wasn't sure that he wanted to hear what the doctor had to say next.

"How is my wrist?"

"Well… it's… it could be better," the doctor said delicately. "But it could also be worse!"

Kuroko's headache and the doctor's method of beating around the bush were beginning to irritate him. "Sir, please tell me the truth."

Looking apologetic, the doctor nodded. "Alright. But first, were you using your wrist extensively? Your arm? Your body shows signs of being put under massive strain…"

Kuroko remembered the almost non-stop Ignite Pass Kais he had made. "Yes."

The doctor nodded. "Alright. Well. Your wrist is shattered at the joint and also fractured in several places. A few ligaments have… snapped, and some of the nerves were bruised as well. It… will take a while for you to recover, but even then, I'm not sure… if…"

"If I'll be able to play basketball again?"

"I—well! That's one way to put it. I think the extra stress definitely made the injury worse than it should have been. Either that, or whoever shoved you into the basketball pole was really rough. Or a mixture of both."

"A mixture of both," Kuroko muttered. "Thank you. Is that it?"

"Well, I'll probably wait until your parents come before talking about rehabilitation and recovery time. But, for the time being, just know that it'll take at least a month before you can get your cast off, and several more before you regain almost full control over it again."

"Okay."

"But, don't lose hope, Kuroko-kun," the doctor said hastily. "There are plenty of athletes who have made miraculous recoveries despite severe injuries… so don't give up on playing basketball!"

"I won't," Kuroko said with a faint smile. "I wasn't planning on it, either. Even if I can't play for a while, I'll still be able to engage in basketball."

"That's the spirit," the doctor said. "Do you have any questions?"

"…Did Seirin win the basketball match?"

The doctor looked surprised. "I'm afraid I don't know. Ah—that's right. There's a boy who's been waiting outside for the past hour or so. I shouldn't be allowing this, but if you'd like, I could let him in."

"Please," Kuroko nodded. "Ah—but, please, don't tell anyone other than my parents that I might not be able to play basketball again… I don't want to trouble them."

The doctor nodded understandingly. "Of course. Now then, if you're ready…"

He opened the door, and a few seconds later, Kagami barreled into the room, shouting obscenities and asking whether Kuroko was alright. The doctor quietly took his leave, telling nearby nurses to please let this one thing go.

* * *

"And that's all the doctor had, essentially," Akashi finished.

"Essentially?"

"There was the incident with Tetsuya's parents… but it was simply that the doctor told his parents that there was a chance Tetsuya might not recover fully. Of course, they were upset, but that was the end of the matter, it seems. Tetsuya was discharged from the hospital after a day and returned to school as normal."

"So," Kise said hesitantly, "do you think Kurokocchi, after some rehab, learned that he would be unable to play basketball again and… that that might have led to his suicide?"

"That is a possibility," Akashi said heavily. "But I feel like that this reason is too simple, don't you? In addition, the doctor said he was recovering well, and that there was a good chance of him regaining full control over his hand."

"Regardless, I don't think that's why Kuroko tried to kick the bucket," Kagami said firmly. Akashi turned ot him, question in his eyes. "It—well, whenever we had practice, he always came, all the way up to winter break, which was a month after he got hurt. And that aside… I just don't think Kuroko would let something like that deter him so… so much."

Akashi nodded. "That is what I believe, as well. There must be something else, whether it is related to his injury or not. And so, Daiki, I believe it is your turn to share your story."

Aomine looked surprised for a moment. Then, he shook his head, chuckling as though mocking himself.

"I should have known you'd figure me out."

Akashi said nothing, only fixing his mismatched eyes on Aomine, who sighed deeply, as if readying himself for a long tale.

* * *

_...and the rest will be saved for next chapter. ;)_

_Thank you everyone for all your support, especially to those who reviewed! It is really encouraging :)_

_Oh, and all that information on comas was taken from random sites online. Not mine. Sites sourced after the exerts. _

_Note on updates: they will probably be coming out slower now because AP exams are just around the corner. _

_And finally, I just want to say thank you to all the heroes at the Boston Marathon._

_Thanks for reading, and have a nice day!_


	5. Chapter 5

"Tetsu! Watch out!"

An accident that should have only happened in fiction, or at the very least, to someone else—a steel support beam was falling. The workers were screaming at the people below to get away. As Aomine watched, heart palpitating so hard he thought he would die, Kuroko stumbled and, arm in cast, lost his balance. Without thinking, Aomine lunged forward, pushing Kuroko out of the way just as the beam landed. He twisted to escape the beam's trajectory, but the steel support crashed into his side. Enormous pain that caused black to pop into his vision crashed his mind, but he managed to hang onto his consciousness.

"Aomine-kun! Aomine-kun!"

Kuroko was shouting; others were trying to help get the construction material off of Aomine. Barely able to move, Aomine could only wait until the ambulances and support from the police and fire department came. He could feel what was probably blood trickling out of his mouth. At that moment, he could have laughed at himself if not for the rib sticking into his lung; he probably looked pathetic right then.

Even long after the ambulances rushed him to the Emergency Room, Aomine could hear Kuroko's voice ringing in his head.

"_I'm sorry! I'm sorry! This is my fault, Aomine-kun, I'm so sorry!"_

_Idiot_, he wanted to say. _This isn't anybody's fault. Just shut the hell up and mind your own goddamn business._

When his mind resurfaced to the world of the awake, the first thing he saw was Kuroko slumped in a chair, looking like a kicked puppy crying in the corner. He wanted to reach out and pat him comfortingly, but god did his side hurt. Instead, he cleared his throat a couple of times to get Kuroko's attention. The boy's head snapped up, and he nearly fell out of his chair.

"Aomine-kun! I'm so sorr—"

"Shut it!" Aomine snapped, or would have snapped if his voice allowed. Instead, all that came out was a horrible croaking noise that made him shut up instead. Kuroko seemed to have gotten the message and retreated, head bowed.

"Not your fault," Aomine finally grunted out. "Nobody's. How long've I been out?"

"Two days."

"Damn. So then, Touou lost…?"

"Yes. Because of me. I'm so sorry, Aomine-kun. You do so much for me, and yet I only end up hurting you."

Aomine could tell his friend was really beating himself up over it. He couldn't understand. Kuroko was talking more than usual, showing more panic than Aomine had ever seen on his face.

"Calm down. I'll hit you."

"Please. Hit me. I deserve to be hit."

"What the—Tetsu, what's wrong with you?"

Kuroko seemed to realize what he was saying. He shook his head violently and backed away from Aomine.

"I'm sorry. You should get some rest. Please, get well soon. And again, I'm sorry."

Before Aomine could say another word, Kuroko was gone. He was left feeling extremely puzzled and annoyingly worried. A punctured lung was not that big a deal, for Aomine at least! And while Touou's defeat bothered him, he'd rather have Kuroko fine and healthy and alive than be playing knowing that he'd let his best friend get hurt. He sighed. He'd have to talk to Kuroko again later and beat some sense into him.

Somehow, all his calls ended up being misdialed ones, as if Kuroko's misdirection had possessed his phone. His texts went unanswered. Even during winter break, there was no sign of Kuroko anywhere. Furious after a few weeks of this treatment, Aomine marched up to Seirin's gates to hunt down Kuroko, but to no avail. After weeks of this, on January 20, he finally caught Kuroko leaving the school and grabbed him by the collar.

"Yo, Tetsu. Nice to finally see you."

"Hello."

"You've been avoiding me."

"I have not."

Aomine shoved his phone into Kuroko's face, showing him list after list of calls and sent texts. Kuroko's expression remained impassive.

"What's this all about, Tetsu?"

"I never got any of those. I changed my number, Aomine-kun."

Aomine could have pulled his hair out in frustration right then and there and would have done it had he not worried about premature balding.

"You're so frustrating! So I was just worrying over nothing!"

"Sorry."

Aomine grumbled and rubbed the back of his neck. "Forget it. Just exchange numbers with me now, and I'll forgive you this time, Tetsu. You been doing well?"

"Yes. And you?"

"Better than ever," Aomine said, finally cracking a grin. "Nothing can stop me after all. I just got the OK from the doctor to start exercising again."

"That's great."

"Jeez, you really gave me a scare though," Aomine said. Kuroko nodded and began walking. Aomine fell right in step. "I thought you had gone and killed yourself or something, what with your lack of response. If it'd been over me getting hurt and not being able to go to the Winter Cup, I don't know what I'd have done."

Kuroko was silent.

"Tetsu?"

"Sorry. I just got distracted by a butterfly."

"…It's wintertime, Tetsu."

"Right. I'll see you later, Aomine-kun. There's a novel I want, so…"

Aomine raised an eyebrow as Kuroko pointed to the small novel shop tucked away between flashier shops. Just as Kuroko took a step away, Aomine grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.

"Listen, Tetsu," he said lowly. "If—if it's about the Winter Cup, forget it. I'd rather have you be alive and safe than have had a place in the finals."

To his surprise, Kuroko gave a small chuckle. "You sound like Kagami-kun when you say stuff like that."

"W-What?"

"But, thank you, Aomine-kun. I was blaming myself for your match, to be truthful. I'm sorry for causing you so much trouble."

"Hey, what are friends if they don't run into a couple hairy spots together, huh?" Aomine said, cuffing Kuroko on the back of his head. "Quit thinking about it, or I'll get Murasakibara to crush your head."

"Please don't."

Aomine grinned. Another thought occurred to him as he saw the momentary light in Kuroko's eyes dim, and the smile dropped off his face.

"But… Tetsu, more seriously. If there's anything wrong, you—you can come talk to me about it. I'm here for you, you know that?"

"How uncharacteristically corny of you, Aomine-kun."

"S-Shut it! It's just been that lately, I've been hearing from Kise that you've been acting kind of funny… so, I was just—not worried about you or anything! Sheesh, forget it!"

Grumbling, Aomine rubbed his face to try to hide the red tinge rising up to his cheeks. Kuroko smiled.

"Thank you, Aomine-kun. But, I really am fine."

"If you say so," he mumbled. "Well, then, see you later, Tetsu. Keep in touch. I don't want to lose contact with you like I did after our final championship in middle school. Let's meet up again soon."

Kuroko nodded. "Okay."

"Later."

Aomine walked away, a nagging feeling worming into his mind.

Two weeks later, Aomine was lounging around a bookstore, looking at the adult section. He got bored and browsed other genres, trying to guess what sorts of books Kuroko would read.

"Haha, it'd be pretty funny if all those books Kuroko reads all the time were actually porn… Oh, T-Tetsu, you were here?"

At his elbow, he suddenly noticed a mess of blue hair.

"I-I wasn't just calling you a closet pervert or anything," Aomine hastily said. Kuroko said nothing and reached out for a book just above Aomine's shoulder.

"How've you been, anyways? You haven't texted me. And don't tell me you changed phone numbers again."

"I was… caught up in something," Kuroko replied quietly.

"Oh? What was it? Girl problems?"

"No."

"Ah, well, no need to be so prickly about it… I guess you don't have to answer if you don't want to. You busy? Wanna play some street basket?"

"…Not today."

"Ah, okay."

Somehow, Aomine felt that the conversation was very forced. Kuroko wasn't usually a big talker in the first place, but he was never _this_ bad at making conversation. So, he closed his mouth for a while and just watched Kuroko un-shelve and re-shelve some books until something caught his eye that he didn't like at all.

"Yo, Tetsu. What's that on your arm?"

Kuroko stiffened for a split second before he lowered his arms, shaking his sleeves over his wrists—or rather, over the faintly blue-purple bruises covering his wrists.

"Tetsu?"

"I… fell down the stairs."

"…really." Somehow, Aomine could perfectly imagine a middle-school Kuroko tripping over nothing and falling down the stairs, but not now. There was something in his voice, in the way he held himself, in the way he wouldn't look at Aomine when he answered that made alarms go off in his head, and he didn't like it.

"You know, falling down the stairs is what people always say when they want to hide something."

Aomine reached for Kuroko's arm, but in a flash, the boy was gone. Aomine spun around, catching sight of Kuroko's foot whipping around a bookshelf towards the entrance of the store.

"Tch, using his vanishing drive to run away from me… Yo, Tetsu, wait up!"

This time, he managed to catch Kuroko before he went too far away from the bookstore. The people on the sidewalks stepped around them, or rather, sidestepped Aomine, but bumped against Kuroko. It irritated him, almost, to see that no one was taking notice of the boy, but there was nothing in his power that he could do to fix it. Besides, he thought, Kuroko was used to it.

"What's with you these days?" Aomine pressed. "You can't just run away like that."

Kuroko was silent, eyes not visible because of the hair strewn over his face. He made no move to speak or to throw off Aomine's grip, not even to avoid getting hit by the pedestrians. They were making a scene, Aomine could tell from the looks passer-bys were giving them, but he couldn't give half a pile of crap at that moment.

"You know, I wonder sometimes if anyone would notice if I disappeared from this world."

"What's that, Tetsu?" Aomine said loudly as a honking car passed by. "You gotta speak up if you want people to listen to you. What'd you say?"

Kuroko finally shook Aomine's grip on his wrist off. "Nothing. It's fine."

"You're always saying that these days!" Aomine protested. "If you've got something to say, then say it! If you have a problem with something, don't keep it to yourself! Always, always, you're helping me, but you never let me help you!"

"You do help me. You were my light in middle school."

"That and this are different," Aomine growled. "Completely different! You—you saved me from myself, but you never let me repay you."

"Please, Aomine-kun. I am fine. I don't want to cause you any more trouble than I already have, so—"

"_What_ trouble?!" He couldn't help his rising voice; he was getting so frustrated. "What trouble have you caused me, Tetsu? If anything, you got rid of them! Because of you, I'm able to be myself again! I can enjoy basketball again! When did you ever cause me trouble?"

A flash of—Aomine didn't know what, but some strange light crossed through Kuroko's eyes at that moment. Triumph flared a split second in Aomine's heart; finally had he gotten a reaction from Kuroko. But as quickly as it came, it was gone, replaced by the dead, lackluster gleam that had been in Kuroko's eyes when Aomine first ran into him in the bookstore. It hit him then: Kuroko looked so _exhausted._

"You wouldn't understand," Kuroko said quietly. "I am causing everyone trouble, and I don't want to anymore. So, please… Believe me when I say that I am fine."

Aomine almost started yelling, but Kuroko cut him off before he could start.

"If you want to know the truth, I really did almost fall down the stairs, backwards, though. Someone caught me by the wrists, so that's how I got the bruises."

"And how did you almost fall down the stairs, _backwards?_"

"I was walking up… and then I felt dizzy and before I knew it, I was falling."

"Why?"

"It's just that—I haven't been sleeping well lately."

"Why not?"

Kuroko sent Aomine an exasperated look, as if reproaching him for being so persistent with his interrogation. "My parents have been fighting late into the night, recently… over financial stuff. That's it."

Aomine breathed out, feeling a load coming off his chest.

"God, couldn't you have just said that from the start? Keeping things from me makes me worry more than when you say the truth, especially when it's like that! I thought you were getting beaten up or something, geez!"

"…I'm sorry."

"You should be," Aomine muttered vengefully. "Kidding, kidding. Alright, well… it's that's the truth, then come and stay over with me!"

"…what?"

"Sleep over at my place tonight!" Aomine said, grinning. "I mean, I know it's a bit of a way from your house, but there's no school tomorrow after all… and you need a good night's rest! You want to stay a midget for the rest of your life?"

"I'm not a midget—"

"Sure, sure," Aomine said breezily. "Call up your folks. My parents will be happy to see you! It's been a while since you've come over."

"I—well, are you sure it's okay?"

Light was positively radiating from Kuroko's eyes. The change was almost unnerving. Aomine had never seen Kuroko look so relieved, and it worried him. He glanced at the half-hidden bruises on Kuroko's wrists, planning to later take a peek while Kuroko was bathing to check if there were any other bruises. But, for the sake of his friend, he hid his worries away and clapped him on the back so hard that his knees buckled.

"Of course, idiot!

Kuroko's smile widened genuinely for the first time that day, which alerted Aomine to another injury he hadn't noticed before—what looked like a half-healed split lip. His eyes trailed over the rest of Kuroko's face. Half of him wanted to reach out and strip Kuroko right then and there, but then people would _really_ kick up a fuss about indecency and whatever else they liked complaining about.

"Kuroko-kun, what a surprise to see you!"

The joy in Kuroko's face snapped off like a light at the voice. Aomine turned, looked around for a bit, and then found the speaker: a friendly-looking man waving excitedly at Kuroko. The newcomer was just a little shorter than Aomine himself, with dark-brown hair styled like Aomine's and slate-colored eyes. Had Aomine been a woman, he would probably call the new person mildly to extremely attractive.

"This is…?"

"I'm Kuroko-kun's teacher from Seirin! I teach math. Just call me Ichiru-sensei. And you are?"

"…a friend of Tetsu's from middle school. Aomine Daiki."

"Ah, you guys must be close!" Ichiru said, closing in on the two of them. "Well, it's getting late, I must say. You two should hurry on home before it gets too dark. Kuroko-kun, you want me to walk you home?"

"You… walk Tetsu home…?" Aomine said incredulously.

"Ah, ah, don't misunderstand," Ichiru negated. "His house is close to my apartment, so sometimes I ask him to help me carry some things home. I actually needed him today, but since I couldn't find him, I had to carry it home all by myself! Geez."

"…right. Well, Tetsu's spending the night at my house today."

"Ah, really?" Ichiru said, smiling. "Ah, what a wonderful time youth is! Don't stay up too late watching dirty things, you hear?"

"We will," Aomine replied.

"Travel safely," Ichiru said, waving goodbye. "See you, Kuroko-kun!"

"You have a nice math teacher," Aomine said a bit jealously as Ichiru walked away, humming. "Wish mine was half as cheerful as he is."

"Ah, really?"

An eyebrow raised, Aomine turned to Kuroko who had already begun walking.

"H-Hey, wait up! That's the wrong way anyways."

"On second thought, I don't feel too well today, Aomine-kun," Kuroko said quietly. "I'll go home instead."

"What? But we already decided—and you looked pretty eager to come over, if you ask me."

"I promised my parents to do some shopping on the way home today… I shouldn't skive. Sorry, Aomine-kun," Kuroko apologized. "For causing you trouble yet again."

"What…? You want me to come with you?"

Kuroko shook his head. "You should go home before it gets too late, as sensei said. I'll… I'll come over another day, if that's alright with you?"

The hope in Kuroko's voice could not be concealed.

"Definitely, Tetsu. You… just… if you have any problems when you go home, just call me and I'll hijack a car or something to take you away, alright?"

"I'm counting on you, then."

"Yeah."

"See you, Aomine-kun."

"Later."

Reluctantly, Aomine watched Kuroko disappear in the crowd before he turned and started walking to the nearest bus station. Something didn't feel right at all with the excuses Kuroko was making—Aomine wasn't smart, but he could tell at least that much. But, if Kuroko didn't want to tell, then who was Aomine to force the truth out of him? Kuroko would say something when he was ready… Aomine would just have to wait…

…right?

* * *

"But it wasn't right," Aomine breathed out. The stars had begun to come out; it was late, almost nine already. They were reflected in his dark eyes as he folded his arms behind his head and swung himself gently in the swing. "It wasn't right at all. If I'd just asked… If only I hadn't given up then… If I asked him what was wrong, because I _knew_ there was something wrong with Tetsu, but I just didn't think it was that serious…"

The rest of the members were silent. They were mute because they all felt the same way. Looking back on the days they had spent with Kuroko, they could all see that towards the end, he was veering off on a stray track none of them could follow.

"You couldn't have known at the time," Akashi finally said, after a long, long while, as if he himself had been thinking such things. "But, I don't want to repeat myself. If you want consolation, ask Shintarou."

"Midorima?"

"S-Shut it! Don't laugh at me for needing to be consoled! You do, too!"

Akashi sighed. "So, January 20, you said?" Akashi ignored the ruckus. "Kagami, when did you say that Kuroko submitted his withdrawal form?"

"Ah? Well, it was mid to late January… something like that. Coach would have more specifics if you need the exact date."

"And how long was your break that year?"

"You mean winter break?" Kagami said. Akashi nodded. "Ahh… we had an extra long break that year because they knocked some days off of other holidays… so, I think it was from December 23 to… January 15."

"And did Seirin meet for training?"

"Definitely," Kagami said, shuddering. "Ahh, it was hell. Even though the senpais had to start studying for their university entrance exams, Coach held some training sessions for us, this time in her dad's gym. Of course, Kuroko was there," Kagami added. "The entire time. He got his cast off at the end of December. Training ended two days before we got back to school."

"Did you have any practices after you got back?"

Kagami grumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. "Geez, asking me to remember all this stuff from so long ago…"

"Yeah, don't expect much from an idiot like him, Akashi," Aomine snickered. A vein popped out in Kagami's neck.

"Ahh, I remember now," he said venomously. "We had one January 23, I'm pretty sure. Kuroko wasn't there at that one."

"And, now, Daiki," Akashi said, turning to him. "Would you say that when you met Kuroko for the first time on January 20, he was normal?"

"Uh… I guess so. He seemed a little sad, but… it wasn't anything like when I saw him two weeks later."

Akashi nodded, more to himself than anything. Those mismatched eyes of his wandered unseeingly across each of their faces.

"…Akashi?"

"I'll have to contact Seirin's ex-coach tomorrow," he said suddenly. "Kagami, do you have Riko Aida's number?"

"Uh, yeah…"

"Ahh, this is all too confusing!" Kise grumbled. "If only Kurokocchi could wake up and just tell us what happened a year ago!"

An awkward silence followed in which Akashi calmly obtained Riko's number from an uncomfortable Kagami.

"Well, that's all," Akashi said, seemingly unfazed by Kise's statement, which the boy was sorely regretting having said. "I think we will meet once again tomorrow, after I contact Seirin's ex-coach. I have something to tell all of you as well, from my own past."

"Gosh, it's like all we're doing is getting nowhere," Kise complained. "It's just one story after the next, and we progress at the rate of a snail's crawl."

"Yes, but at least we are progressing," Akashi said. With a grumble, the rest of them left, except for Midorima once again.

"You looked like you wanted to talk to me," Midorima said, pushing up his glasses.

"Correct. Where did you go after I—rudely, I will admit—sent you away?"

Midorima huffed. "I dropped by Seirin on a whim."

"Did you find anything?"

The memory surfaced. '_ONE OF YOUR TEACHERS IS ENGAGING IN FORCED SEXUAL ACTS WITH HIS STUDENTS. CLASSROOM 3-4 WAS WHERE I SAW THEM. PLEASE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.'_

Disgruntled, he cleared his throat and shook his head. "Nothing of importance."

"Alright."

"What are you thinking, Akashi?"

"That question again, Shintarou?" Akashi chuckled. "As of now… just that Tetsuya's reaction towards his teacher was rather odd. But that is all. So, until tomorrow, Shintarou."

"Right."

It was reminiscent of yesterday's events again, how Akashi turned and began walking away, exuding the air of a leader. Midorima caught himself swept up again in that strong presence.

But, it was a different presence than that of four years ago. While then, it had been almost unbearably strong, intimidating, forceful and caustic, now… it was more reassuring and warm. He didn't question the change; he already knew that it was Kuroko who had instigated this transformation in Akashi.

Suddenly, a question popped into his head that he couldn't help but blurt out.

"Akashi!"

The redhead stopped and turned, mismatched eyes meeting Midorima's.

"Yes, Shintarou?"

"Ah, that is…" Midorima hesitated, but now that he had started, there was no turning back. "Do you… regret meeting Kuroko?"

Akashi's lips twisted into a wry smile. "What kind of question is that?"

"No, just that… ever since Kuroko came into our lives, we've changed so much… I hate to admit it, but I know that I am happy with the change Kuroko wrought upon me, and I know that Aomine, Murasakibara, and Kise are also glad of it… but for you… we never knew."

Akashi's smile stayed in place. His eyes closed, hiding away the red-gold gaze that was so piercing—

—the red-gold gaze that was so pained…

Midorima never got an answer that day. Akashi simply walked away. Midorima stayed in the playground until he could no longer hear the _tap-tap_ from Akashi's shoes. He remained there for a half-hour, just watching the stars as they silently sang to the earth an emotionless, heart-wrenching lullaby.

Finally, when he could no longer bear the sorrow pouring from the dark sky speckled with empty lights, he began to move his feet into a heavy rhythm, keeping his eyes glued to the ground.

* * *

_This chapter was originally going to be over 8000, but I decided to cut it down and break it into two. So, expect the next chapter soon! I'm sorry for OOCness, bad grammar, etc._

_I couldn't help but put in boatloads of Aomine & Kuroko's friendship! I really miss their relationship from their early middle school days. _

_Thank you for all the support. If you could, leave a review on your way out. They are my motivation, after all :)_

_Have a nice day! :)_


	6. Chapter 6

Midorima went directly back to his room he shared with Kise, finding today two unwelcomed guests by the names of Aomine and Murasakibara.

"What. Are you doing here," he said flatly.

"Ahh, Mido-chin, hi," Murasakibara said, looking happier than usual with a bag of candy in his hands. "I didn't want to pay for another night in the hotel, so I came over with Minechin and Kisechin."

"This is not a haven for freeloaders!" Midorima huffed.

"Ahh, calm down, calm down," Aomine said lazily, waving a hand in the air. "Come on, I'm not a freeloader. I helped Kise with the dishes this morning."

"Geez, Midorima," Kise pouted. "You're so passive-aggressive. You could have just said 'go clean the dishes' instead of leaving that note on the fridge. So mean!"

Midorima grumbled, face in hand, already feeling a headache come on. "…enough. I'm going to bed."

"Ahh, okay," Murasakibara said. Quickly losing interest as Midorima shut himself gloomily in his room, he turned to the blond who was happily grinning at his iPhone on which he seemed to have a forum pulled up. "Kisechin, do you have any more snacks? I'm done."

"Already?" Kise said. "Ah, okay, one second. I think we have some more somewhere…"

Leaving his phone behind, Kise bounced to his feet and into the kitchen. While Midorima feigned annoyed at having his former teammates aggregate in his apartment, Kise showed no restraint in showing his joy. Whereas before, say in freshman year of high school, he might have found it a little annoying to have so many people mooching off of him, he had no such feelings now. Every extra person from the past was something to cherish now—something he had learned after Kuroko had almost died.

"_If only I'd spent more time with him… we could have lost him, and yet I never got to show him how much I owe him…"_

It was, Kise nodded to himself, comforting to know that his friends were still on this earth.

Meanwhile, as Kise rummaged around in the near-empty kitchen (no doubt Midorima would post another note on the fridge along the lines of _Your fortune today says that it is good to take advantage of grocery sales)_ Murasakibara grabbed Kise's iPhone, glancing over it with an interested look in his eyes.

"Oi, oi, you shouldn't poke around other people's things," Aomine cautioned.

Murasakibara gave a childish pout. "But I'm curious."

Sighing, Aomine gave up, and Murasakibara proceeded to have his way with Kise's phone.

"Ah, I know this forum," Murasakibara said as he scrolled down the posts. "It's where people go to get help with some life problems."

"Huh? Kise's into things like that?" Aomine muttered. "What kinds of problems does _he_ have? He's rich, he gets the girls…"

"No…" Murasakibara said. He found his way to Kise's post history, which was empty. "It doesn't look like he posts here. I think he replies."

Heading to the 'replies' sidebar, Murasakibara found that what he had guessed was true. "Ah, it seems he replies to a lot of people's problems."

"What?" Aomine guffawed. "What a weirdo."

"He's one of the top commenters… wow," Murasakibara said. "The site goes all the way back to almost two years ago…"

Instantly, Aomine was alert. Any phrase that contained 'a year ago' or 'two years ago' was of immediate interest. He could tell Murasakibara felt the same way by the way the giant's posture straightened just an inch.

Was it possible that they were going to find something here on this forum related to Kuroko?

Aomine scrambled to get a better view over Murasakibara's shoulder, which was nearly impossible normally, but since Aomine was on the couch, it was possible. There came a great crash from the kitchen and a wail of pain, which was ignored.

"You don't think…"

"…it's what I'm thinking," Murasakibara nodded. "If Kuro-chin knew about this site… do you think he would post here?"

"Is there any way to find something like that?" Aomine said, peering at the small screen. "They don't use real names on this thing, do they?"

"What are you guys doing," an irritated voice came from above. Yelping, Aomine jumped and somehow managed to tumble over Murasakibara's shoulders and into his lap, effectively hiding the iPhone from view. Midorima, in his nightclothes and looking _very_ displeased with his arms folded across his chest, raised his eyebrows.

"So you two are like that?"

"No!" Aomine squawked. "No, no! It's just, you see—"

"Enough. I see it all. Don't worry, I won't be a busybody like Kise and tell everyone else."

"Y-You're misunderstanding!"

"Then what are you doing. Why is there such a ruckus in this place while I am trying to sleep."

"Not my fault!" Aomine said. "It's Kise who's messing around in the kitchen like a drunk elephant!"

"I'm engaged in a warzone here!" Kise yelled from the kitchen. "It'd be nice if you could give me a hand and help me out from under these pans!"

"Dear god…" Midorima breathed. Muttering viciously, he stomped to the kitchen and then started noise that resembled that of someone being beaten violently about the head with a pan.

"Sounds painful," Murasakibara commented.

"Sure, sure," Aomine said. He took the phone from the giant and stared at it pensively. "Ahh, if only I had Akashi's brains or something, I bet I could figure out how to find out if Tetsu posted on this thing or not…"

"Well, when you're talking about brains, isn't there one here?" Murasakibara pointed out.

"What? You can't… you can't mean your own, right?!"

"What's with that tone of voice," Murasakibara said, grabbing for Aomine's head. "It annoys me. I was talking about Midochin. He's always been pretty smart."

"Ohh, right," Aomine said, successfully evading Murasakibara's enormous hand. "I forgot about that. He's always such an idiot that I—"

"_Who_ are you talking about?"

"Ah, Midochin, nice timing. Here, Kisechin's phone."

"Hey!"

"Why do I need this disgusting object that Kise uses?"

"Mean!"

"That forum, I've seen it before," Murasakibara said. "It's one where people post about their sad life problems, like not having enough snacks, and then people reply, trying to help them."

"And?"

Murasakibara sighed impatiently. "It's relatively new. It started back to about two years ago, November 12."

"…oh."

"What? What?" Kise said. "I don't get it. What was November 12?"

"Use your brain for once! It's Tetsu, Tetsu!"

"So you guys are thinking that maybe Kuroko posted on this forum?" Midorima said, eyes sharp.

"Ah, I guess you are pretty smart after all."

Midorima's eyebrow twitched, but he let it slide in the light of this new potential source of information. "Kise, what do you know about this site?"

"Ah!" Kise said eagerly, hoping to be useful. "Well, like Murasakibaracchi said, it started a couple years ago. I learned about it from one of my fans, who sent me an email asking if I could take a look at her new website. So, I did, being a good person, and decided that this would be a great way to pay back my fans! You know, like, helping the public with their problems to try to make their lives better since they give me so much support!"

"So corny…"

Kise decided to ignore Aomine's remarks. "The influx was pretty low for the first few months, and then after about a year, it really started to kick off."

"The first few months… that would be when Kuroko was probably having his problems," Midorima muttered. He found the search bar in no time and looked up dates from November 12 all the way to May 7. Instantly, a few hundred posts surfaced, all posted on dates within the time period Midorima had specified. "Found it."

"What?!"

The other three scrambled to see—Murasakibara only had to crane his neck a little—the small screen.

"Don't get so close," Midorima said disgustedly. "I meant that I've got the dates narrowed down… but you do know," he hesitated. "You do know that chances of Kuroko actually visiting this site are…"

"Slimmer than a stick of pocky," Murasakibara finished.

"But it's a chance…" Aomine said. "And it's better than nothing."

"Besides, I want to contribute something, too," Kise said. "If this in any way… ends up helping, then… because all you guys have something about Kurokocchi to say, and Akashicchi is doing all the work, so I just feel bad…"

"I didn't have anything to say at all to contribute to the investigation," Midorima negated.

"Neither did I," Murasakibara agreed.

"And even if you did, you would just feel like… shit," Aomine said quietly. "Knowing that you had a chance to stop him… but that you couldn't see that there was something wrong… it's the worst feeling."

Unexpectedly, he felt weight on his shoulder. He looked up. Midorima was resting a hand on his shoulder, looking dead ahead—like he didn't want to admit that he was trying to… comfort him?

It was like he was trying to say, _it's okay_ in that awkward way of his where he didn't want to admit to being kinder than he actually seemed.

"Tch. I don't need your concern," Aomine muttered quietly. But, he made no move to brush off Midorima's hand. It was comforting, in a twisted way, to know that there was someone who felt almost as bad as he did…

"Everyone should get to bed," Midorima said after a while of silence. "I'll take your phone, Kise, if it's alright with you…"

"Sure. Anything that might help."

"But don't be disappointed if I don't find anything," Midorima cautioned. "In fact, the probability is high that I won't." He turned to leave, glasses flashing momentarily. "But, I'll try until I am 100% sure that there is nothing that can be found here."

Kise gave him a wobbly smile.

"Room with me tonight, Kise, in case I have any questions for you."

Kise looked surprised. "I thought you hated people intruding in your room…"

"An exception," Midorima sighed, "can be made in certain cases. Come." He nodded at Aomine and Murasakibara. "Good night, both of you."

"Right. See you tomorrow morning."

They filed into their respective rooms. Kise took the floor, Midorima the bed, unwilling to concede that much.

Midorima's mind was whirling with activity. He knew Murasakibara's sign had the second-best luck today, and Kise had first place… did this mean something?

He concentrated hard, running every detail of the day's earlier conversation through his head.

January 15, Seirin begins school again.

January 20, Aomine catches Kuroko, who seems fine at that point.

January 23, Seirin has their first practice after break. Kuroko, at this point, disappeared.

February 2, Aomine sees Kuroko again, who seems to have changed.

Judging from these facts… It was likeliest that something happened between January 20 and January 23. Midorima narrowed his search between these dates. There were nine posts.

"Find anything, Midorimacchi?" Kise asked. There wasn't a hint of sleepiness in his voice.

"Not yet. Get to bed. Lack of sleep decreases efficiency during the day, and god knows you're already dumb enough."

"Hey!" Kise mumbled. "Everyone always bullies me…"

Midorima began reading the posts, skimming through some of the following comments as well. He took note of each username.

"Does this site not allow anonymous posts?"

"Not at first," Kise said. "But after they began to be allowed, popularity really shot up."

"I see…"

_[Nananono1990, January 20, 9:43 _

_My mother recently went missing! I don't know what to do. I've contacted police and everything weeks ago, but they haven't found her yet. If you have seen Kana Kyousuke—]_

"Kuroko's mother's name was… Kuroko Haku, right?"

"Mhm."

"Wrong person, then…"

He moved onto the next post.

_[Kitaranchouhibinai January 20, 18:21_

_I am being bullied. I don't want to go to school anymore. Nobody looks at me. Nobody notices me except when they want to pick on me. I want to disappear completely. Can someone help me?]_

"Do you think Kuroko ever got bullied?"

Kise immediately said, "No. He's not the type to get picked on. Plus, Kurokocchi wouldn't stand for it. He would stop it one way or another on his own, don't you think?"

"Right."

_[09848237666 January 21, 23:01_

_I think I killed somebody.]_

"What the… there's a murderer on this site?"

"…Can't be Kurokocchi," Kise said. "Kurokocchi would _never_ do something like that, ever. Actually, no, I think I remember that post. I commented on it, didn't I?"

"What's your username?"

"Taseri Kiyou. You switch around the characters of my name."

"…Couldn't you have been a little more original? Moreover, I didn't ask to know the origins of your username," Midorima said. "Ah, I found your comment. 'Please report yourself to the police! Especially if it was an accident; the worst thing you can do is hide it.' Lame."

"What?" Kise said indignantly. "It's true! I was trying to get the guy to turn himself in before he maybe did something worse!"

"Alright, alright," Midorima said, shaking his head. He moved on to the next post.

_[Shibatorada January 22, 2:03_

_I can't sleep. My neighbors are having a fight again. They're always fighting. I half wish they would move out. They live in the smallest, most unnoticeable house in the neighborhood that's been here for almost a century. Everywhere else has been renovated or rebuilt except for that house. I think it's because it's super cheap. It's right next to mine, and recently, there's been a lot of shouting, ever since November, I think. _

_I'm sorry that I am complaining, but to be truthful, I am a little worried. They have a son who is a few years younger than I am. I've only ever seen him twice. He has bright blue hair, so that's how I noticed him the first time, but then I blinked, and he was gone._

Midorima breathed in sharply. "Kise—Kise, I found—_Kise, I found something."_

"Holy—shit, Midorimacchi, move over!" Kise whispered in half-excitement, half dread. He leaped into the other's bed; Midorima barely made a noise of protest, so engrossed in the text.

_[Earlier, a few hours ago, there was a really loud bang as if someone were slamming the door shut. I looked outside and after a while, I saw the kid walk out of his yard and down the street. I don't know where he went. There are still people yelling, I'm guessing his parents, in his house. I guess if I don't see him later today, coming home or something, I'll post again, just in case this is the start of something… I'm just worried.]_

"How did you not see this post?" Midorima hissed, whisking his thumb across the touch screen to get to the comments.

"I don't know—no, wait. Someone stole my iPhone while I was modeling, so after a week, I got a new one and deactivated my old one… I didn't really bother to read everything that I had missed. I'm sorry! Damn, if I had only…"

"Stop blaming yourself! There's another post from him—or her—later."

_[Shibatorada January 23, 2:49_

_I haven't seen the kid since. I'm starting to get a little worried. I heard screaming—like_ screaming_ as in bloody murder earlier. My family's all asleep; actually, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one awake right now in the neighborhood other than the people in that house. I learned the kid's name; funny how I've never bothered to learn it. I asked my parents today—I won't say the entire name in case, I don't know, someone does something weird with it, but his surname is Kuroko._

"No doubt about it then," Kise said in a hushed voice.

_[If anyone knows this kid, let me know if you've seen him. I don't… I don't know why I'm so worried. It's just this gut feeling that I have that something wrong happened. I usually trust my instinct because ever since I was born, my parents have said that I've always managed to detect trouble before it's come, so now I'm just… really preoccupied. _

_Ah, it seems like someone is leaving the house—a woman? I can't see too well, the streetlight is dim, but it looks like a woman… she has a suitcase. I wonder if she's leaving? At any rate, the shouting has stopped…_

_I've no one else to tell, so I guess I'll post updates here.]_

"Is there any way to contact this person?" Midorima asked.

"I—I don't know. You can look at their profile to see if they have any information on it, like an address, but there's no way to send people messages on this forum."

"What happens when you post a reply?"

"You usually get an email notification… you're not… are you?"

"We'll see where this goes," Midorima said grimly. "At the end, if need be, I will use your account to add a reply… is that alright?"

"Sure."

"But… didn't you say you got your phone taken from you?"

"Yeah… why?"

"You made a reply on this post on the same day." Midorima showed Kise.

_[Taseri Kiyouta: wwoo thats so hilarious i hope somthing happens]_

"Who the—that's not me!"

"I know. Even you don't write that idiotically."

_[Shibatorada January 23, 18:59_

_The kid came back. I feel relieved. Thank you to those who told me you saw him on the streets earlier today. They really reassured me. I'm going to go to bed, soon. Staying up so late for so many days has really taken a toll on me. I have to start studying for Uni exams. Thanks again.]_

"So in the end, nothing happened?" Midorima murmured.

"Hey—no, look, the next one! The username! I swear, that's gotta be Kurokocchi!" Kise yelped, grabbing the phone from Midorima, who let out a disgruntled noise.

"Hey—"

"_Phantom11_—Phantom11! Midorimacchi, isn't it? It has to be!"

"It could be just a coincidence…" Midorima said, not believing his own words. Kise had the best luck today. Wouldn't it make sense for him to be the one to find something out like this?

"Let me read—Kise?"

Kise's golden eyes were wide-open, in shock and what Midorima could only hazard a guess at as horror. His hands were limp as Midorima cautiously took the phone from him. Without another moment's hesitation, he read the post from Phantom11 quickly, but it didn't process in his mind. He had to read it twice more before it finally registered, and then finally, finally, things clicked.

_"Yo, Tetsu. What's that on your arm? …Tetsu?"_

"_I… fell down the stairs."_

"_Why?"_

_"It's just that—I haven't been sleeping well lately."_

It would make too much sense—Kuroko being kicked out of his house late at night would explain why Aomine thought he looked so tired. The bruises on his wrists Aomine caught a glimpse of were now explained…

The post was gut wrenching, but more than that, the first comment on that post was more horrifying—or rather, the potential effects it could have had were terrifying.

"Kise… did you ever tell anyone your username for this?"

Kise's tears were only confirmation for Midorima's fears.

"Was it Kuroko?

The golden-haired boy clamped his hand over his mouth, tears leaking from his eyes as he nodded.

Midorima swiftly, without a single extra movement, got out of the bed and changed into day-clothes: a simple dark green v-neck and black cargo shorts. He motioned to Kise.

"Are you coming?"

"Where are—where are you going? Moreover, you're not mad at me?"

Midorima turned, fixing his green eyes on Kise's yellow ones. "Why would I be?"

"It—it was my account! I could have been the cause of Kurokocchi's—Kurokocchi's suicide!"

"It's not your fault that you got your phone stolen," Midorima snapped. "And it didn't even sound like you. And even if Kuroko believed that it was you that said it… he's not that weak."

But Midorima's words fell flat in his mouth; not even he himself believed them. _He's not that weak._ What was weakness? Was turning to suicide really weakness?

Wasn't facing death supposed to be terrifying?

What would drive Kuroko to surpass even fear of death to escape life?

"I'm going to Seirin," Midorima announced.

"Seirin? Why?"

"I… just have a feeling that I can find out some things there."

Kise's eyes darted to the digital clock on Midorima's bookshelf. It was after eleven. The school doors would be locked, and no doubt there would be a couple of patrols later into the night.

But of course, none of this mattered.

It didn't matter that this could be held off until tomorrow. It didn't matter at all that it was an unreasonable hour. It didn't matter that they could be caught.

If it was for Kuroko…

"Okay. I'm coming. We should bring Aomine and Murasakibara, too—"

"No," Midorima said flatly. "That's too many people. We might get caught."

Kise got to his feet angrily. "They have a right to come! How would you feel if it were them who had found this out and then later you discovered they went and investigated on their own while leaving you out of the loop?!"

Midorima seemed to have an internal struggle for a moment. He breathed in deeply.

"Fine. I'll wake them up. You get changed. We're leaving as soon as everyone is ready."

Leaving Kise to prepare, Midorima grabbed a camera and left the room. He knocked loudly on Kise's door before going in and throwing on the lights.

"Hey—what the fuc—"

"Midochin, I'll get angry."

Midorima crossed the room to the bed in a few strides. He shoved the iPhone in their faces.

"Kise and I are going to Seirin in a few minutes. We found some evidence on this forum of what may have happened to Kuroko. Phantom11 we are assuming is Kuroko. The first comment was posted from Kise's account, but not by Kise himself, rather from the thief that stole his iPhone. Read it and then decide if you're coming."

Aomine and Murasakibara exchanged glances before taking the phone from Midorima.

_[Phantom11 January 24, 1:59_

_I was sexually assaulted twice. I won't go into details. I don't want to relive it._

_He let me go. The first time, he said he would hurt one of my friends if I ever reported him. I started avoiding my friend after that, not wanting to get him into trouble. _

_The second time was today, just a few hours ago after I met a friend. I went… home afterwards, I think. I'm not really sure. _

_I feel dirty. Disgusting. I want to cleanse myself, but I can't. I can't stand this feeling; I can't look at myself in the mirror without seeing what was done to me. When I think about what happened, an inexplicable panic takes over me, and I almost hyperventilate, then I almost stop breathing. I tense up, and can't do anything for several moments until I finally regain control over myself. I feel so dirty. I want to escape. It's like I've been plunged into a place without light or even darkness—a place so empty that I want to escape no matter what it takes. _

_Can someone help me?] _

_[Taseri Kiyou: What the heck? Youre disgusting. Why didnt you fight back? Why did you let him do that to you? I bet you provoked him! People like you who push the blame on the other guy are the worst. You should just disappear!]_

"What the _hell_ is this guy saying?" Murasakibara growled.

"That… January 24, 1:59 in the morning… a few hours ago would mean… just after I talked to him," Aomine breathed, horrified. His eyes, gleaming strangely in the light, moved up to meet Midorima's. "I… how could I have…"

"_On second thought, I don't feel too well today, Aomine-kun. I'll go home instead."_

"I should have, no matter what, stopped him… If only I had…"

Murasakibara laid a heavy hand on Aomine's head.

"We're coming," Murasakibara said. There was a hardness in his voice that neither the other two had ever heard before. "Just lead the way."

"Right. Get changed first, preferably into something black."

"Black?"

"We're going to break into someplace," Midorima said quietly, turning around. His glasses shone momentarily as he pushed them up his face with more force than usual. His heart was beating fast, but a frightening calm had taken over the rest of his body and his mind. "It could be dangerous. We could get caught."

"Doesn't matter," Murasakibara said. "We're coming. Right, Minechin?"

Aomine was already ripping his clothes off and changing into a black t-shirt and shorts.

"We're leaving in five minutes. We have to catch the last bus to Seirin."

With that, Midorima left. He found Kise waiting by the door, looking ready to go and dressed in all black. Moments later, the other two were out.

The air was heavy. Kise and Aomine looked anywhere but at the others, no doubt feeling immensely guilty. Midorima couldn't open his mouth to say anything to them; part of him wanted to shout at them for having played a part in Kuroko's suicide; another part of him wanted to tell them that it was not their fault; and yet another part condemned him, told him that he had no right to acquiesce to either of the former two desires because he, too, was at fault.

If only Akashi were here to say something to them as he had done to Midorima…

If only?

Midorima blinked.

How often had he heard that term 'if only' and its variations used in the past two days?

"_I should have, no matter what, stopped him… If only I had…"_

"_If only I hadn't given up then…"_

"_I don't know—no, wait. Someone stole my iPhone while I was modeling, so after a week, I got a new one and deactivated my old one… I didn't really bother to read everything that I had missed. I'm sorry! Damn, if I had only…"_

"_It wasn't right at all. If I'd just asked… If only I hadn't given up then… If I asked him what was wrong, because I knew there was something wrong with Tetsu, but I just didn't think it was that serious…"_

_"It's just… that day, if I'd followed Oha Asa's advice…"_

He shook his head. Now was not the time to think about such things. He doubted Akashi was still up; the boy had looked exhausted at their meeting. His mind flashed back to what Kise had said_—"They have a right to come! How would you feel if it were them who had found this out and then later you discovered they went and investigated on their own while leaving you out of the loop?!"_

"Should we… tell Akashi and Kagami?" Midorima posed uncertainly.

"Let's not… Akashicchi is already doing so much… he needs sleep," Kise murmured. "Plus, the last bus doesn't go past his or Kagamicchi's hotels, right? Come on, let's go, we'll miss the bus."

"Right."

They were all so silent in the bus, bubbling over with guilt and outrage. Midorima knew the others wanted an explanation for why he wanted to go to Seirin—or, rather, how he was so positive that it was at Seirin where they would get more information, but he didn't want to talk about it until he was 100% positive.

_"…you hear?"_

_"You mean the sexual assaults? Yeah, but they're just rumors, you know… don't act so scared."_

_"Don't lie! You're scared too!"_

It had taken an instant for everything to come together for Midorima, but these events were all held together with a fragile string that could be snapped at any moment.

"_His house is close to my apartment, so sometimes I ask him to help me carry some things home."_

And more than anything…

"_As of now… just that Tetsuya's reaction towards his teacher was rather odd."_

He just didn't want to believe that it could be true.

_There was a sound like the blinds being hit on the window; sunlight rushed in, momentarily illuminating the two people inside. Midorima couldn't help looking. His eyes widened._

_A female student._

_A male teacher._

He clenched his eyes shut tightly. He had never begged for anything, not in his 19 years, but today, he found himself pleading for the first time…

_I feel dirty. Disgusting. I want to cleanse myself, but I can't. I can't stand this feeling; I can't look at myself in the mirror without seeing what was done to me. When I think about what happened, an inexplicable panic takes over me, and I almost hyperventilate, then I almost stop breathing. I tense up, and can't do anything for several moments until I finally regain control over myself. I feel so dirty. I want to escape. It's like I've been plunged into a place without light or even darkness—a place so empty that I want to escape no matter what it takes. _

Please, don't let it be true.

_Can someone help me?_

"Why…" Kise murmured. Midorima looked away from his face; there were tears swimming in his eyes. "Why? Why didn't he come to us for help?"

"He must have been ashamed," Midorima said, feeling as if his heart had turned to lead—his chest was so heavy.

"Ashamed? Ashamed of what?" Kise cried.

"You read it. What Kuroko said," Midorima said. The next words he nearly tripped over because, although he would never admit it, they hurt.

They hurt a lot.

Though Kuroko called himself nothing but a shadow, in reality, he was himself a sort of light. In their darkest moments, the Generation of Miracles was guided by Kuroko himself out of their broken husks and into a brighter world, which they had once known but had since forgotten. They could not reiterate it enough:

They were all saved by Kuroko.

Knowing this, it made it the pain that much more excruciating upon realizing how little they had done for him.

It made the pain that much sharper upon realizing how Kuroko must have felt.

It made it that much worse upon reliving those words.

"Kuroko… He called himself disgusting."

The word was like a whip. They all internally flinched, unable to help themselves.

"He must have thought we would see him differently… treat him differently if we knew what had been done to him. He must have been scared that we would push him away…"

A more disturbing thought hit Midorima then. If Kuroko had believed that his closest friends would shun him after learning the truth, did that not also mean that…

"He must have lost trust in us…"

Kise looked shocked. More than shocked. Disturbed, almost, frightened, hurt, and more than anything, guilty. He wasn't the only one. The other three, even Murasakibara, mirrored his expression, eyes glazed with what one would call hot, dry, bitter tears. Kise, the most prone to letting his emotions steer him, was already crying. The hot tears splashed against his knees on which his hands were clenched so tightly that his fingernails were beginning to break the skin on his palms.

"I still can't understand…"

If only his tears could have never fallen…

If only the hurt could be erased…

If only time could be reversed…

If only…

If only…

_If only…_

* * *

_Again, thank you for all the support._

_Kuroko's experience and reaction were taken mainly from my own experience. No, before you ask, I was not exactly sexually assaulted, and no, it was not a teacher. It was more that something intimate forced on me (I'm a virgin still, so not _that_ bad) by my ex, who knew that I was really uncomfortable with doing such things. Afterwards, I came out feeling very confused and very disgusted with myself and entered a period of self-loathing, out of which I emerged only after I learned to separate my thoughts and my feelings from each other, which probably in itself wasn't even the best thing to do. Even now, a year and two days later, I cannot fathom ever being handled like that again and start having the same reactions if I think about it too much. I myself wish that there was a way to erase these feelings, to make it better, but I have not found one. I am sure that it will come as I mature, so I will wait._

_I inserted this into Kuroko's story because I want to help raise awareness of these things. It is sexual assault awareness month after all, haha. Too often, I hear the phrases "s/he was asking for it" or "it's his/her fault that s/he got sexually assaulted like that," and I wanted to tell anyone, everyone that it is not true. If by reading Kuroko's experience you can take away something, I consider my goal achieved. But, if you already know that it is not the victim's fault, that nobody 'asks for it,' cookies for you! _

_One thing that really hurts, though, is when people tell you to get over it. I never complained about my experience; I told only my closest friends once, and then it was a closed book. However, I did take steps to never run into my ex and to cut off communication as much as possible. These things irritated his friends, understandably, who in turn told me to grow up, become mature and become friends with him once again. One told me it was my fault, in any case. The ones who did not know me hated me for avoiding him, even though they did not understand my own position. They talked about 'if she didn't exist;' someone - my best friend - even said this to me directly. _

_Never do this to a person who has been violated._

_I tried talking to him to placate my friends. _

_I regretted it. _

_Refusing to forgive is not immature. Being strong is not composed of showing that you can move past it and forgive. Being strong is sticking to your own morals. _

_My sister is much better at explaining this sort of stuff than I am. She taught me all of this, that it's not my fault, etc, and helped me to ultimately take steps away from how badly I was feeling. Hopefully, I have managed to get my point across…_

_But don't worry! I am doing fine, so long as I don't have to communicate with him._

_Anyways, enough ranting. And sorry if you do not share my views. Happy sexual assault awareness month._

_As always, thank you for the support! And sorry for OOCness; I just can't seem to write Murasakibara very well. _

_Thank you for reading! I hope you all have a nice day :)_


	7. Chapter 7

(Since it's been a while) Recap of Chapter VI:

"Kuroko… He called himself disgusting."

_I feel dirty. Disgusting. I want to cleanse myself, but I can't._

"He must have thought we would see him differently… treat him differently if we knew what had been done to him. He must have been scared that we would push him away…

_I feel so dirty. I want to escape. It's like I've been plunged into a place without light or even darkness—a place so empty that I want to escape no matter what it takes._

"He must have lost trust in us…"

_Can someone help me?_

"That forum, I've seen it before. It's one where people post about their sad life problems, like not having enough snacks, and then people reply, trying to help them."

"So you guys are thinking that maybe Kuroko posted on this forum?"

"Ah, I guess you are pretty smart after all."

"I'll take your phone, Kise, if it's alright with you… Room with me tonight in case I have any questions for you."

"Hey—no, look, the next one! The username! I swear, that's gotta be Kurokocchi!"

"Let me read—Kise? Did you ever tell anyone your username for this? Was it Kuroko?"

_What the heck? Youre disgusting.__You should just disappear!_

"We're going to break into someplace. It could be dangerous. We could get caught."

"We're coming. Right, Minechin?"

* * *

Suicide, huh.

"_What do you think about people who commit suicide, Midorima-kun?"_

What a heavy word.

"_I have no respect for those sorts of people. They, who cannot do anything but take the easy route out of their problems, don't need respect. They, who cannot think of the others around them, are only selfish. Why are you asking me this anyways, Kuroko?"_

What a heavy word, just like the heavy heart in Midorima's chest.

"_Ah… no, I was just wondering."_

Hot, heavy word; hot, heavy eyes behind glasses separating him from the rest of the world.

"_What about you, Kuroko? Since you asked me, I also want to hear your opinion."_

"-dorimacchi? Midorimacchi? Hello?"

Midorima snapped out of his trance-like state, quickly repositioning his glasses on his nose. "Sorry. I was caught up in my thoughts. What were you saying, Kise?"

"_I… think they…"_

"_What's that, Kuroko?"_

"…_I think they're selfish people, too."_

"_We agree on something for once, then."_

"_It seems to be so."_

"I was saying that we're here. We're at Seirin. Everyone's waiting for you, so lead the way."

"_It _is_ just the easy way out, isn't it… And… it would be troublesome for everyone else…"_

An awful feeling in Midorima's chest rose, partly because at that moment then, he was on the verge of discovering the truth, partly because of the conversation he'd shared with Kuroko that he had remembered only just now. He felt something pulling at his feet, imploring him to stay here, don't go—when had he become this irresolute?

Ever since he had found out Kuroko had committed suicide, things seemed to be going in to a blur. His actions were not absolute anymore; nor were his thoughts. Even when almost being able to feel the truth in his hands, he was hesitant. And why? Why was this so? It was like he was barreling forward one moment and then reeling back the next—so disgustingly indecisive, as if he didn't actually want to know the truth—as if he were _afraid_ of the truth.

Because maybe the truth would shake some of the foundations of his principles.

Like…

That of suicide.

He would not lie. He would only retain his silence on the matter. He suspected that Akashi knew how he was feeling, but the rest were not to know.

They were not to know that Midorima's opinion of Kuroko had dropped after it had been brought to light that Kuroko had committed suicide.

Suicidal people are selfish. They are self-centered, not giving a single thought to those they would leave behind. They are, in one word, _pathetic_. They are neither strong enough to deal with their own problems nor resolute enough to continue living even for those around them. Neither trying to ameliorate their position nor believing that it _can_ be bettered, they wallow, they mope, they wither away in self-pity…

Wasn't that right?

The bus driver was getting impatient, waiting for them to hop off the vehicle. Midorima stood jerkily.

If he so adamantly believed in his own conjectures on suicide, why did he feel so horrible for having said them to Kuroko? Was he being hypocritical now that someone close to him had gone and tried to take his own life?

"Let's go."

The time to ruminate on such things was not now.

The former members of Teikou Middle School's basketball club filed out of the bus, making a beeline for the building of Seirin High School. There was little light, save for that of the waning moon and the streetlamps lining the streets.

The gates, of course, were closed when they reached the walls surrounding the school.

"See anyone?" Midorima muttered, craning his head. Murasakibara stretched his neck a little and looked over the gates.

"No."

"Alright. Murasakibara, you push us over. Aomine will pull you up."

"What? I can't pull that giant up! I bet he could just take a running leap and jump over the gate anyways."

"Don't argue!" Midorima snapped. "Now, hurry!"

Murasakibara raised them all easily and all he had to do was jump a foot into the air and grab the top of the gates in order to pull himself over. With no trouble at all, they found an unlocked, open window on the first floor and within seconds, they were all inside of the building of Seirin High.

"We're going to the second floor. Be careful that you don't trip. Kise, your iPhone has a flashlight built in, right?"

"Ah? A-ah, yeah… you aren't… going to make me lead the way, are you… Midorimacchi? It's not like I'm scared or anything, ahaha…"

"Useless!" Midorima snarled, grabbing the phone from Kise. He directed the light forward and moved. "The class roster should be in the teacher's lounge… Come on, get a move on it, Aomine! What are you so scared of?"

"There—there aren't ghosts in here, right?"

"Why are you talking about the most useless things at the wrong moment?! I should have come here by myself," Midorima groaned. Without much further mishap, they found the teacher's lounge. Before anyone opened the door, Midorima held out a hand.

"Don't touch the doorknob. Kise, you open the door."

"What? Me? Why?"

"According to Oha-Asa, your luck today is the best," Midorima said testily, readjusting his glasses. "And mine is almost worst. If I touch the door, it is likely that it will be locked. So, do it."

"Wait, it won't matter who opens it if it's already—"

"Don't argue!"

"Eep! I—okay," Kise said uncertainly. He put his hand on the handle, turned it—

The door swung open.

"Lucky…"

Midorima strode in and snapped on the lights.

"H-hey, won't we get caught like this?"

"It'll take longer without them on!" Midorima snapped. "Now, get to it! Look for the class data and find the name belonging to Ichiru—probably from a class from two years ago."

"Ichiru—isn't that—you can't mean…" Aomine spluttered. "How?"

"Earlier today, I found a teacher taking advantage of a student without her consent," Midorima said while wrenching file cabinets open. "Unfortunately, I was unable to get incriminating evidence."

"Wait… so you're saying that…" Kise said slowly. "That teacher was the one who assaulted Kuroko… and was also the one Aomine ran into?"

"Yes."

"That son of a bi—"

"Enough. Kise, pick a cabinet. Any cabinet. Or anything that looks like it could contain class rosters from two years ago."

"Huh? Me again?"

"Yes!" Midorima snapped impatiently. "Just point!"

"I—okay, then—that one?" Kise said timidly, pointing to an almost dilapidated filing cabinet in the corner of the room. Without further ado, Midorima dragged him to the container and forced him to open a drawer and then pull out a file.

A smile twitched on the edges of the lips. Bingo in one shot. There was the teacher there, Ichiru Hikaru, homeroom teacher of the class of two years ago. Subject taught: math. Students included one Kuroko Tetsuya. Flipping further through the pile, he found that Kise had really hit the jackpot—phone number, address, and email were all listed.

Midorima pulled out Kise's phone. He typed in the teacher's address and in no time had a map pulled up. His eyes widened.

"We're leaving."

"What?"

"Now. We're going to his house. He lives five minutes away on foot. Don't fall behind."

* * *

Ichiru Hikaru had only one thing running through his mind as a gigantic purple haired boy grabbed him by the head and held him up so high that his feet dangled almost a foot off the ground:

_Why me?!_

All he had wanted was to sleep. It was like sleep was the only thing worth living for these days. Being a teacher at Seirin was grueling work these days. Don't get him wrong, Ichiru usually loved his job, loved teaching, loved dealing with snotty-nosed freshmen and arrogant, lazy seniors. It was just that these days, most of his money was being directed somewhere outside of his own needs, and that was making his own life tight-pinched around the edges. So every day, he worked overtime in hopes of being recognized by a higher-up and thereby earning himself a nice little bonus, but every day his hopes were dashed and he returned home after eight with a banging headache and red eyes and a longing, loving look towards his small bed.

Yes, sleep was the only thing worth living for, he thought every night as he let his tired, aching body and tired, aching head rest on the beloved mattress. Well, he should make an amendment to that statement. There were a few other things kind of worth living for and two things really worth living for, one of which was sleep, and the other of which was…

Ichiru closed his eyes, forcing the image of bright blue hair and pale skin sprawled out on his bed away. That was the part of the real reason he slogged away every day.

And that was probably the answer to his question 'why me.'

So he didn't struggle; he just sort of sighed into the gigantic hand wrapped around his head and waited as the giant's accomplices argued. Robbers, murderers, kidnappers, or whatever—Ichiru didn't care what they did to him so long as they didn't disturb the neighbors. Because, boy, the woman next door had a mean throwing arm from softball during her time in high school, and her favorite object to chuck at people she didn't like was her hot curling iron.

"Murasakibaracchi!" someone was crying. "No!"

So his assailant had a name long enough to match his enormous physique. Murasakibaracchi.

But 'Murasakibaracchi' was either deaf or just uncaring. He hoisted Ichiru up even higher so that they were eye-to-eye.

"What did you do to Kurochin, hm? That's not nice you know."

"Hey—I know how you're feeling, but this is too far—let go of him!" someone else shouted.

"Release him!" another commanded. "We won't get any answers this way!"

Snorting, Murasakibaracchi opened his hand, and Ichiru went tumbling to the ground in an ungraceful heap. As composedly as he could, he untangled himself and stood, brushing his blue and white polka dotted pajamas off with a hand while clearing his throat.

"So, uhm, dear friends," Ichiru said. "To what do I owe this enthusiastic greeting? I mean you guys started banging on my door and as soon as I opened it, Murasakibaracchi over here—"

"What did you just call me?"

"…Your name?"

Murasakibaracchi lowered his head so that he was again eye-to-eye with Ichiru.

"...Okay. I'll assume the 'cchi' is something cute somebody tacked onto your name or something." Ichiru began massaging his head, which was beginning to pound as if it meant to kill him, and waved to the door. "First off, get inside before you wake the neighbors."

Warily, the four looked at each other before nodding and entering the apartment. Ichiru locked and bolted the door before staggering in after them. He wished he had his baseball bat in his hands; he should've known better based on the fact that people were banging on his door at what—midnight?

"Now please, tell me why I have been greeted in such a fashion," he said very patiently. "In all my twenty six years, I have only once ever had such an enthusiastic reception."

The blue-haired kid let out a low growl. Glasses-boy held out a hand.

"Your name is Ichiru Hikaru, correct?" he said, tone icy.

"Yes… don't tell me you went and nearly took my head off without fully knowing my identity…"

Murasakibara flexed his fingers, and Ichiru edged away.

"This basta—" the hot-tempered one snarled, lunging forward. Ichiru easily sidestepped and tripped his assailant, sending him flying to the ground.

"That," Ichiru said disapprovingly, "is not a kind thing to do, boy. I really should be calling the police."

"That's our line!" blondie countered. "After all, you're the one that—that—r-raped Kurokocchi!"

Ichiru blinked, expression of pure confusion and astonishment on his face. Silence reigned the room for a full five seconds.

"I did what?"

"Don't play innocent!" the kid with blue hair snarled. "We know you did it!"

"What?"

"Ah, this guy is really annoying me," Murasakibara said. "Can I take his head off?"

"Please wait," frog-boy said, glasses flashing dangerously. "Explain yourself."

"Hold on," Ichiru said, holding a hand out, the other rubbing his eyes. "Did I seriously get rooted out of bed, assaulted, and interrogated by you guys only to be convicted of this crime? This is a bad dream," he said, shaking his head. "I don't know what part of my sub-consciousness summoned you guys, but heck, you're doing an awful job of acting. Goodnight. I bid you farewell."

"What the—Get back here!"

"Please, I am not having a good day," Ichiru sighed. "And thinking about Kuroko is only going to make it worse."

Seeing that the foursome would not be budging and that his comments were only exacerbating the situation, he sighed.

"Listen, why don't you all just settle down nicely, and I'll get my glasses so I can see all of you properly and make you some nice, calming tea so we can have a nice, reasonable chat."

"Like _hell_ we will—"

"At least do it for Kuroko, then!" Ichiru said, irked. "I know for a fact that he wouldn't want you all to take my head off without first setting things straight!"

They continued squabbling for a good ten minutes before Ichiru managed to talk some calmness into them and usher them into the living space so that he could fetch his glasses and see them properly. Reluctantly and with hostility, they introduced themselves.

"I can't believe we're actually sitting down so calmly in this bastard's house," Aomine growled, eyes fixed on Ichiru who was making tea. Finished, Ichiru poured enough cups for everyone and served them all.

"Now, then, before we dive into the heart of the matter, allow me to ask you a question," Ichiru said. Before they could protest, he said loudly, "Who do you think is paying Kuroko's hospital bills?"

They looked stunned, as he expected, but also unsure. "Well, that'd be… his dad, right?"

Ichiru shook his head. "You guys really don't know anything. Kuroko's father? You think that sort of guy is actually taking care of his son? You must not know anything about Kuroko at all. Plot twist: I'm the one paying for Kuroko's bills."

Again, as expected, shock painted their faces. Irritating how they hadn't done their research correctly. Ichiru didn't know who exactly they were, but they must be good friends of Kuroko to be barging into his apartment with such vigor at midnight. But, he was disappointed at the same time. It had taken them a long, long time to figure out what had happened, and they even hadn't gone about investigating the right way—a little poking around would have easily revealed that Kuroko's benefactor was named Ichiru Hikaru.

Ichiru frowned and tapped his lower lip as the foursome struggled to wrap their minds around this new revelation. He hoped they'd at least met Kuroko's father. On the other hand, if they had, they must be blockheads, because it should have been obvious from the start that the scraggly, stupid, moronic man was _not_ the type to keep a kid who was on the verge of death on life support. Life support was so much money, as Ichiru knew too well. He smiled wryly, remembering the last hospital bill. $8,000 a day. _$8,000._ Double that, since he had another person on life support as well. He was getting help from a millionaire friend, and he was crossing his fingers that he would never, ever have to repay that friend.

The kids were finally managing to form proper sentences. "No way… you're lying right?"

Figures that would be the first sentence out of their mouths. Ichiru said, "Nope."

"Then who…?"

"Well… that…" Ichiru sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "I guess you could say Taiyou and I knew each other well; we were neighbors all throughout our childhood. I suppose that's really where I should start this story," Ichiru said. "If you want to know the entire thing. Get settled, it's a long story.

"He's older than I am, Taiyou is, about seven years older, so of course he left first, but he'd come home often for the holidays, and we'd hang out sometimes.

"Eventually, of course, I graduated, too, and after a few years in University, became a teacher at Seirin. My second year of teaching, when I was about 26, I found out that Taiyou lived nearby and that he had a kid that was about ten. I went to visit a few times, met his wife… they weren't doing too well financially even back then. They barely had anything, just the essentials.

"I didn't go over very often, being busy myself, and because Taiyou and I had grown apart over the years. I began teaching upper level math classes soon enough, and that just took up a chunk of my time, so I sort of forgot about Taiyou and his family… until recently, when his son showed up in my class.

"I visited again after remembering Taiyou existed—mean, I know, right? Forgetting someone's existence like that… but that's nowhere near as cruel as what Taiyou did to his son."

Ichiru's voice turned flinty, almost as icy as Akashi's eyes could be when he was angry.

"What happened?" Midorima ventured. "What did Kuroko's father do?"

Ichiru turned his gaze on the green-haired boy. "You know, your hair is really funny. Not as funny as the guy with purple hair, though."

"You—!"

"Relax, relax," Ichiru said, laughing easily. "Back to the subject… Taiyou did nothing," he said simply. He sighed and leaned back in the couch, folding his arms behind his head. "Absolutely nothing, and that was the problem.

"You're looking for the entire story, aren't you?" he said. "I'll give it to you. I'll give you the entire damn thing. And you'll regret hearing it, just as I regret seeing it." He paused, closing his eyes.

His voice was quiet when he continued.

"That's not right. I don't regret it. I can't regret knowing the truth, no matter how damn awful it is," he breathed. "I'm thankful I saw it, otherwise… Kuroko would probably be dead right now."

"What?"

* * *

On a day coming home late from school, Ichiru decided to swing by Taiyou's house to see how he was doing. He'd heard from old friends Taiyou was fighting with his wife again, and to be frank, he was a little worried. Taiyou had a bad temper—not explosive, but more cunning, silent fuming, quiet fury that was possibly even more dangerous than the volatile type. It was something that could drive a person insane.

He'd just crossed the street when he saw a figure—Taiyou just passing through the walls around his house. He called out, giving Taiyou a wave when he turned.

"Hey! You just get home?"

"Yes. Mairu isn't here today, so I went out to eat," Taiyou said. He turned back around, and then stopped short, staring down at something at his

Kuroko was lying in front of the door, clearly unconscious.

But Taiyou stood still only for a few seconds before stepping over his son, turning the key calmly in the lock and entering his home.

Ichiru froze in shock, his expression so contorted that he wasn't even sure what it would reveal about the emotions bubbling underneath. What started as shock transformed into disbelief. Taiyou surely couldn't be leaving his son to lie on the steps when he most obviously needed to be attended to, right?

"Taiyou. Where are you going?"

"What?" Taiyou didn't even come back outside.

"That's my question. _Where_ are you going?"

"Is there something wrong?"

Ichiru tried to stay calm. He really did. It was supposed to be his strong point, which he built up after a few years of dealing with hormonal teenagers.

But he couldn't. He really couldn't.

"Get the fuck outside."

Complying, Taiyou showed his face at the door, looking extremely impassive and stepping right over Kuroko.

"Is that your son?" Ichiru said, pointing to Kuroko.

"Does that matter?"

"Why aren't you taking care of Kuroko?"

"He doesn't need to be taken care of."

Ichiru's eyebrows shot up into his hairline. "Excuse me?"

"He doesn't need to be taken care of," Taiyou repeated. His face contorted. Ichiru was almost glad that the reflective surface of the lens hid away his eyes; he didn't know that he wanted to see what they held as Taiyou's next words finally drove Ichiru to the breaking point.

"Rather, I should say that he doesn't _deserve_ to be taken care of."

Ichiru whipped his hand back and drove his fist across Taiyou's fist just as the sneer was beginning to curl Taiyou's lips. The other man's glasses flew off from the force of the blow. Stumbling, Taiyou wiped his mouth where a small trickle of blood was beginning to flow, feeling the sting harshly.

"You deserved that," Ichiru panted, expression livid. "You goddamn deserved that. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people like you who don't give damns about a single person other than themselves, not even for their own kids. Do you know what it feels like to be neglected? Do you know what it feels like to have no one on your side in this damn world?"

"Playing the tragic hero, are we, Ichiru?" Taiyou leered. His accent was thick; blood was in his mouth. "Your childhood beginning to creep up on you again? Remembering how your mother tried to get you to commit suicide with her that one day?"

Ichiru balled his fists up.

"Oh, and not to mention your father, who brought his women home when your mother was out. Did I remember that correctly?"

This was what he hated about Taiyou; this is what he meant by the quiet fury. Taiyou didn't explode; he analyzed and pushed the right buttons to make you hurt. It was a twisted version of his quiet son's rapid analytical abilities. Ichiru had seen Taiyou's time and time again lately, most recently when he visited during the middle of a fight between Taiyou and Mairu. Ichiru was usually a calm man, taking most things in stride, but when it came to Taiyou, there was just an air around him that riled Ichiru up.

"And wasn't there that time when you came home all bruised up from a fight and your father only beat you?" Taiyou said insidiously. "My, my, no wonder you're so defensive over that undeserving boy."

Ichiru realized that blood was flowing down his chin because he was biting his lip so hard. Such a reaction was only Taiyou's victory; he could tell the older man was smirking victoriously.

_One day,_ Ichiru promised vengefully, _you will get what you deserve._

"Say all you want," Ichiru said. He heard his voice come out steadily, contrary to how shaken up he was inside. "Say all you goddamn want. If you won't bother about your son, then _I_ will."

Ichiru picked Kuroko up gently, an eyebrow shooting up when he felt how light he was. His lips twisted.

"Have a horrible evening," Ichiru said. "And I mean it."

Taiyou made no move, made no sound when Ichiru took his son away.

Fuming, Ichiru slammed the door to his apartment shut, not caring whether he disturbed his neighbors or not. More gently, he laid Kuroko down on his bed, hesitating for a bit. He didn't know what to do; moreover, he didn't know what sort of help Kuroko needed or what even happened to the boy. He seemed to be breathing fine; his face was its normal pale shade.

"What happened to you?" Ichiru murmured, brushing the hair out of Kuroko's face. The artificial light struck harshly on his features, accenting shadows, making more prominent the paleness of his lips and the stark contrast of his split lip.

"Did you get into a fight or something?" Ichiru sighed. "You didn't seem the type to… ah, what am I doing, talking to a kid who's not even conscious."

He walked out of his room, closing the door gently, and headed to the kitchen, where he stood looking a little woebegone because he didn't know what one was supposed to make for sick patients, never having gotten sick much himself.

Curry was good. People always liked his curry. He'd learned how to make it from the old man who'd adopted him after his parents landed themselves in jail. He'd make it light, in case Kuroko didn't want to eat much. Rolling up his sleeves with determination, he set about cutting vegetables as quietly as he could, a sort of bubbliness taking over him, because this sort of felt like _family _to him for some reason, which he hadn't experienced for about a year ever since his adoptive old man went into a coma.

It hurt still to think about his old man. Ichiru laughed at himself from time to time for clinging onto the dying fatherly figure so hard, but, he couldn't help it. After years of abuse from his biological parents, of course he would hold onto the one person who showed him what a family actually is.

Curry was done in a half hour, and so was the white rice sitting in the cooker. He took out a small bowl and ladled out a tiny portion of food, warming up a glass of water as he waited for the curry to cool. Leaving the food in the kitchen, he knocked on the door gently—which felt a little weird since it was _his_ room after all—before entering.

His heart skipped a beat; he couldn't see Kuroko. Had the boy walked out while he was cooking? Ichiru walked forward, and then he saw the lump of blankets on his bed.

'_Should I touch him?'_

"Kuroko?"

The small mountain flinched. It moved sluggishly and grew smaller, like it was drawing itself in.

"Kuroko… it's your teacher, Ichiru. I, uh… well, I guess you'll want to know where you are. You're at my place… I brought you here about an hour ago after I, um… found you." Ichiru stopped, glancing around the room. "Um… so… yeah."

Kuroko said nothing.

"I'll… leave you alone for now, okay? Unless you want me to stay, in which case I'd be more than willing, but…"

"Where's my father?"

"What?"

"My father. I know I went home, or at least I think I did."

"L-Like I said, I found you…"

"Was he there?"

"I—"

"Please don't lie."

Ichiru bit his lip and set the tray of food down.

"Kuroko, I'm so sorry…"

The ball on the bed shifted slightly. "I understand. Thank you, Ichiru-sensei. I… just want to be alone right now."

"Okay," Ichiru said softly. "I'll be right outside if you need anything. Don't hesitate to ask."

Ichiru left silently, and just before he closed the door, he thought he heard a sob.

* * *

"Afterwards, he stayed at my place and skipped school for a couple days, and I knocked a few days off my paid sick-leaves so that I could take care of him. He never went home in that time. I got the story from him… all of it. And…" Ichiru sighed. "I do know who did it."

"Who?!" Aomine said, lunging forward. "Why didn't you report him, you goddamn—"

"Calm down," Ichiru said. "Actually, no, get mad at me. I deserve it. Because I was weak… that guy is still teaching at Seirin, still taking advantage of the students."

"You…"

Ichiru heaved a sigh. "I can't say anything in my defense except for this. I mentioned I had an old man in the hospital, right? One who's been in a coma for about three years, now. I can't… let him go. He's the only family I've had…

"Let me explain before you get your panties in a twist. Of course I confronted the man who did that to Kuroko once I got back to school. He's… well, he's my only cousin… and he knows my old man and in what condition he's in… and… he has a few friends working at the hospital, and it'd be no problem for them to pull the plug on my old man, based on what he told me. So I chickened. I chickened, and I let myself down, and worst of all, I let Kuroko down. I couldn't let go of my old man, not after he took me in. So, hit me. Hit me hard. I deserve—"

Before he could finish his sentence, Murasakibara drew back his fist and slammed it with all his force across Ichiru's face. Ichiru's glasses went flying off his head, and he gasped for breath, holding a hand to his head.

"Thank you," he gasped out. "Thank you very much. That was—that was wonderful."

"My pleasure," Murasakibara grunted. "Now, tell us who hurt Kuro-chin, and we'll leave you alone forever."

"That…"

"You've already caused enough damage, so just tell us."

"Isn't there a level-headed person in this group?" Ichiru sighed. "If I tell you now, you'd probably all go hunt him down like you did me—speaking of which, how _did_ you find out where I live?"

"We broke into the school. It was my idea," Midorima said.

Ichiru threw his hands up in the air. "And I thought the glasses-boy would be the most reasonable."

"So what do we do now, Midorimacchi?" Kise said. "If he won't tell us…"

"We'll pry it out of him," Midorima said testily. Ichiru raised his hands and shook his head.

"No. Not until you bring someone calm in here. You bunch are like a group of monkeys on fire, seriously."

"The calm one…" Kise said. "Would be Akashicchi, right? But, I don't want to know what he'd do to us if we called him in the middle of the night…"

"That doesn't sound calm," Ichiru muttered. "Tell you what. You stay here for the night, and then call your little friend first thing tomorrow morning. I'll spill the rest, and then you go on your merry way and clap the bastard in chains for me while you're at it. Does that sound good?"

"Why not _now_?" Murasakibara said impatiently.

"Because you'll probably get arrested for breaking and entering," Ichiru said with a sigh. "And perhaps manslaughter. So sleep. It's two in the morning, and I like to get some rest before the sun shines its ass over the mountains."

Ichiru brought out blankets for them to sleep on since there were no buses running at this hour and with a final wave, cheerily headed to bed. The rest of them mumbled for a bit about the shocks of the day, but feeling the effects of adrenaline wearing off, their eyelids grew heavy. Midorima set his alarm for six in the morning, planning to text Akashi then. Then, in a few minutes, they were all asleep.

* * *

_I have only three words to explain the delay: AP exams, final exams, sleep._

_This was so hard to write. Can you tell? It's very fragmented because I wrote bits and pieces of it while I had my little writer's block. And the ending, ugh. I couldn't make it any smoother ffff. I'm sorry if I disappointed. I took extra days with it to try to make it better, so hopefully..._

_I hope the plot twist wasn't too overboard. That's one thing I'm really worried about in this chapter, but somehow, when I was writing Taiyou in chapter 2, he just didn't seem the type to spend money on someone who might not wake up. I felt that he'd pull the plug and then be like 'toodles,' really. Wow, that sounded awful. Unfortunately, only guesses can be made by Ichiru & the rest as to how Kuroko got assaulted in the time between when he met Ichiru and Aomine and when he went home, but when (if?!) he wakes up, everything will fall into place._

_And then Ichiru. Oh, Ichiru. Ichiru was REALLY hard to write, mainly because I was so worried about how to portray him! I wanted to him to be hated a little, but also understood as to why he forsook Kuroko for his old man. I didn't write much on the topic of child abuse having had no experience with it whatsoever. Since it was so hard dealing with Ichiru, I drew a few sketches until I made one that clicked, and I was like 'THIS is Ichiru, finally!' and that gave me more of an idea about how to write him. Tell me what you think of him so I can get a gist of whether I succeeded or not. And also, if you'd like to see the sketches, let me know so I can post a link on my profile page/in the next chapter. _

_A little more on Ichiru, if anyone's interested: he's a teacher, so he's probably not that rich, and paying two hospital bills to keep two people alive is really taking a bite out of his budget. He's got some stupid pride, so he asks his millionaire friend for only what is absolutely necessary, so his budget's really tight. His favorite meal right now is cup ramen, because it's cheap! He's been more serious in this chapter (what do you expect, he was talking about Kuroko), but I imagine him as a kind of goof who's good with kids. _

_And then to the reviewers._

_Holy. I'll just be honest, and say of the very few people I've told my story to, only one person had a response like you all's, and that was my sister. The rest, well… I don't mean to berate them, but they were understanding enough, yet put some sort of blame on me. One of them told me that I should have told him not to do xx and yy when we first started going out, and I was like, how was I supposed to know he was going to do xx and yy? I didn't say anything save for, 'Oh. Ok. Sorry."_

_Ok, anyways. _

_I can't help but be bamboozled by the comments in your reviews. Honestly, some of you wrote essay-worthy ones and baffled me. I'd no idea so many people around felt strongly about the topic or that so many people were so kind. I do believe my favorite phrase was "excuse you, you piece of rotting excrement" from Nightmaric, on the subject of victim blamers. Hearts for you._

_I've been telling this to a lot of reviewers, so I guess I'll just say it here: My main goal of this story is to raise awareness about certain touchy topics that I've been learning about myself. I feel like over the past year, I've been exposed to these things and have developed ideas radically different to those I originally had—not that I had many because I hadn't even thought about these subjects a lot myself. On the subject of sexual assault, I never gave much consideration to it because… well, it's not a pleasant thing to think about. And on the other subject that I'll be writing about in the next chapter and which you caught a glimpse of in this, I was… particularly… well, you'll see. This author's note is getting too long, so I'll just cut it here._

_Again, thousands of thanks to everyone giving this story their attention. Stay safe, everyone! _


	8. Chapter 8

Once, when he was waiting in a coffee shop to interview some poor, idiotic moron who dared to be running three minutes late and _counting_, Akashi unintentionally overheard a conversation between two short, burly men, one of whom, a foreigner, had had a narrow escape regarding a volcanic eruption on an island some thousands of miles away.

"Those volcanoes," the man was saying, wiggling his fingers in the air. "Those volcanoes, you must be wary of them. You can never forget the rage they harbor within themselves. Never. Forget, and you dead. They are like angry gods. Very angry, yes. With anger like _kaboom! _But no, they do not show this anger on the surface. They keep their anger, the hot lava, inside, never letting a single soul know when they are about to blow. People forget the terror of this god because it seems so controlled on the outside. And then, at the drop of a cat—"

"A hat," his conversational partner interjected. "At the drop of a hat."

"Yes, yes," the other said, waving impatiently. "At the drop of a hat—_boom!_ Volcano erupts in a steaming, murderous mass of white fury! Shoots rocks into the air like from catapults! Hits you, you dead. Lava, rage hits you, you dead. Melted. Blistered. Ashes. Ashes everywhere, in sky, in water—suffocating. This is true fury of volcano. Rage bottled up, unseen, isolated from the rest of the world, but when it tips over the edge—cannot describe the fear. Never forget the fear. Something to be reckoned with."

A furious Akashi Seijuuro was, like this volcano, someone to be reckoned with.

Those red-gold eyes of his smoldered like a fire, and his lips turned bleached-paper white as he scanned the text message he'd received from Midorima Shintarou at exactly 5:43 that morning. He pushed his rage down, deep into a small box that he tucked away in some corner of his body, where it would rest and collect. More, more, and more would it collect, until it could not contain any more anger, and then—_pop!_ The lid would shoot off, and whoever was unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity would be a lucky winner.

Akashi Seijuuro did not like being left out of such important matters as tracking down a potential rapist—_Kuroko's_ rapist—in the middle of the night and possible homicide.

Neither did he like the fact that _Kuroko Tetsuya had been raped. _

That had been beyond his expectations.

Very calmly, he set his phone down on the table beside his bed and rose to shower. He was out in minutes, drying his hair with a towel, leaving wet marks on the carpet behind him, but he had hardly the attention to spare. His phone was bleeping at him like a dying goat. He picked it up to see a few messages from Momoi Satsuki.

A strange expression flickered across his eyes, as fast as a single beat of a hummingbird's wings. Momoi Satsuki, a girl he had not seen in a good while, nearly a year. Not since Tetsuya had—

He closed his eyes. He exhaled, then opened them again to read.

_[Akashi-kun, did you know that Tetsu-kun's father isn't paying the hospital bills?]_

Akashi's eyes narrowed. The doctor hadn't mentioned this.

_{No. How did you find out?}_

_[Ah, sorry. I meant to tell you last night, but my brother caught the frying pan on fire… by the way, I'm sorry I couldn't make it to the reunion…]_

_{Don't worry about it. Your grandmother's 91st birthday was on the same day after all. But what's this about Kuroko Taiyou?}_

_[Well… I don't know how to say this, but…]_

_[I've been visiting Tetsu-kun often since I'm attending Tokyo University, right? I was talking to one of the nurses yesterday, one who regularly tends to Tetsu-kun. She said that a man with black hair and glasses comes by often to check up on Tetsu-kun.]_

_[I asked her more about him, and she said that she wasn't supposed to tell anyone.]_

_[So I did a little digging for information and found out that Tetsu-kun's bills are being paid by someone named Ichiru Hikaru.]_

_[He's a teacher at Seirin and taught Tetsu-kun his second year, when… it happened.]_

_[He has a cousin named Otori Katou who also teaches at Seirin, too.]_

_[Ichiru-san has another person he's taking care of in the hospital, an old man who adopted him.]_

_[I was really surprised, because that person is also in a coma. You know how much life support costs, right?]_

_{Around $8,000 a day, isn't that so?}_

_[Right.]_

_[So I did a few more checks, since a teacher shouldn't be able to procure $16000 a day for a year plus an additional $8000 for one year.]_

_{An additional?}_

_[The other person has been in a coma for two years, now.]_

_[Anyways, it seems he's good friends with the son of the owner of a well-known company. I think his friend has been helping him out.]_

_[However, I don't think this sort of thing can last.]_

_{Why not?}_

_[I did some more background checks on the company, and they seem to be floundering in the economy, recently. Their stocks haven't been doing too well internationally, and they've been laying off employees. At this rate, I don't think Ichiru-san's friend can support him for very much longer.]_

_[Well, that's it for what I have on Ichiru-san for now. How are you, Akashi-kun?]_

A smile was gracing Akashi's lips; leave it to Momoi to begin to crack the code on her own. If she even got the faintest whiff of the truth of what had happened to Tetsuya, Akashi had no doubt that it would take only a day, if not less, for Momoi to figure out what had been hidden from her. His lips tightened imperceptibly. Why _had_ they been hiding the truth from Momoi? As part of the Generation of Miracles' time, she should have been right with them from the very start. And yet, they had been subconsciously protecting her from the truth that would have cut right through her—that they _assumed_ would cut right through her. Why? Did a girl like Momoi need such protection? Wasn't this looking down on her, assuming that she would not be strong enough to bear the truth?

Or maybe it was looking down on the Generation of Miracles and Kagami, admitting that the truth had nearly been too much for them to handle, so how could it be easy for Momoi to handle?

"_Satsuki, you're shaking—you should sit down."_

"_I'm fine, Dai-chan. I'm fine. Just—Tetsu-kun, I can't…"_

"_Sit down."_

"_A-Alright. Just—Tetsu-kun—there was… there was a lot of blood, wasn't there?" _

"_You shouldn't have seen it."_

"_What do you mean I shouldn't have seen it?"_

Either way, it was wrong of them to hide away the truth behind red on blue.

_{Satsuki. I need you remain calm upon reading my next words.}_ Akashi quickly typed into his phone.

_[Huh?]_

_{What I am about to tell you… you would have found out on your own, I'm sure.}_

_[?]_

_{Kuroko's accident was not an accident at all. It was a suicide attempt.}_

There was no reply.

_{We have been keeping it from you. It was a selfish desire of ours; I apologize. I am currently about to head over to where the rest are: Ichiru Hikaru's apartment. If you wish to come…}_

_[Mm. Thanks for telling me, I guess, Akashi-kun. But… I had a feeling that this would be what it came down to.]_

Akashi felt his eyebrows moving up his forehead. _{A feeling?}_

_[You could call it a woman's intuition! I'm… sorry for not telling you about me feeling earlier, but… I was scared, I guess. I… didn't want to think about it. Anyways, I'll count on you men to get the story from Ichiru-san. I'm already at Seirin.]_

_{At Seirin?}_

_[Woman's intuition again! I just wanted to snoop around a little more and see if I could find anything else. I'll be here for the rest of the day—so if you guys want to drop by and tell me everything—and I mean everything, okay?!—then I'll be waiting.]_

_{Of course.}_

_[Alright. Keep in touch!] _

Feeling a little smile rise to his face, Akashi turned off his phone, hearing a click as the iPhone locked.

He drove one of his father's company cars to Ichiru Hikaru's apartment, knocking on the door twice sharply. Kise meekly greeted him, looking a little worried as if he was scared Akashi might kill him with a death glare for keeping things from him. But Akashi slipped into the room without a word—which was possibly even worse, because quiet anger was even more dangerous—and Kise timidly shut the door.

There was a man standing at the door of the kitchen with a few cups of tea teetering in his hands. Seeing Akashi, he raised an eyebrow.

"Your friend?" he asked.

"Akashi Seijuurou," Akashi said, inclining his head slightly. "I have been informed that you have been taking care of Tetsuya this entire time. I must thank you for that."

"What? Midorimacchi, did you tell Akashicchi everything already?" Kise said in surprise. But Midorima shook his head, looking confused himself.

"Don't worry. Satsuki told me this morning."

"Momoicchi…?"

"It was a mistake to leave her out of things," Akashi said, sighing. Ichiru tilted his head to the round table in the middle of a larger room, indicating that they should all take a seat.

"Yeah… well, no one wanted to tell Satsuki," Aomine muttered. "She… really was too attached to Tetsu."

The rest of them shifted uncomfortably while Ichiru chuckled.

"Ah, high school love drama. The best kind. Not that I mean to be insensitive," he added hastily under glares. "Not at all. So, Akashi-kun, was it? How much do you know?"

"Enough. I believe I was asked to come here to extort some information from you."

"Extort?"

"By force if necessary," Akashi said very serenely. "The name of Tetsuya's rapist, that is."

"Ah, ah, no, that wouldn't do at all," Ichiru said hastily. "I can't have you kids go become murderers because of me."

Akashi's eyes flashed dangerously, but Ichiru seemed impervious to the effect. Aomine was impressed.

"Why don't you guys tell me your story first?" Ichiru said. "You never told me what your relation to Kuroko was."

"Are you trying to waste our time?" Murasakibara said dangerously.

"Not at all. Don't get me wrong; I want that guy clapped in chains as much as you do. But, Kuroko's kind of important to me, you see. So, I just want to know a little more about him."

Aomine shrugged. "There's not much to tell. We were all—minus Kagami—"

"Kagami?"

"He should be here any minute—"

The door crashed open and a redhead barreled into the room, looking crazily demented and furious. Ichiru jumped to his feet with a cry of despair; Kagami was treading his muddy shoes all over the hardwood floor.

"You bastards!" Kagami bellowed, nearly wrenching handfuls of his hair out of his head. "How could you do this without me?! Is that the guy? Huh? Huh?! Why are you all sitting calmly and drinking tea? Is this another weird-ass Japanese custom? Drink tea with the man you're about to kill? Huh?!"

"Your shoes! Take off your shoes!" Ichiru cried. "I just cleaned the floor on hands and knees yesterday!"

"Huh?!" Kagami roared, looking as if he was willing to take down a rampaging rhinoceros. He looked down and saw the mess he was making. "Ah…"

Sheepishly, he trudged backwards to the foyer and removed his shoes. After throwing murderous glares at Ichiru and muttering under his breath_ after tea, you're dead_, Kagami sat down next to Kise, who looked as if he were sitting next to a ticking bomb, and viciously stirred his tea around.

With a morose sigh, Ichiru cast one last glance at his sullied floor before plopping down between Aomine and Murasakibara, fully knowing that with one wrong word, the two of them could probably pop his head off like a cork from a wine bottle. Seemingly unperturbed by this very probable scenario, Ichiru sighed and leaned back on his hands.

"Well, then, your story? You have all the time you want. I called into the school this morning and said I was sick."

Finally, Ichiru coaxed the story from the recalcitrant group. From day one of middle school to when Kuroko entered Seirin to the day Kuroko tried to die. The atmosphere went from tense and angry to bittersweet as they remembered the first happy memories of playing together as a team to falling apart to being reduced to ashes and then being revived by Kuroko. And then the air went stale as they remembered seeing Kuroko's motionless body strewn on the street…

"And we didn't see it," Kise said. His hands were clasped around his teacup on the table, and he stared unseeingly into its depths. "We didn't see the truth. Or—we _saw_ it, but we just didn't accept it. We rejected it with all our might—" He looked up suddenly, eyes glistening around the edges. "Were we wrong to do that? I've been—" he looked back down at the table, "I've been feeling so guilty these past few days, ever since we found out that Kurokocchi had tried to commit suicide. Because, we could have found that out earlier instead of milling around and pretending not to know. We could have done something earlier and helped Kurokocchi. If we'd been just a little more attentive, maybe Kurokocchi would be with us right now… I feel really… awful…"

"You didn't even do anything to feel bad about," Kagami snorted, a tough façade to hide whatever emotion dwelling in his rust-red eyes. "All you did was lose your phone. When you look at me—look at the rest of Seirin, we should have looked harder. Kuroko was there, in the shadows, right under our noses, and yet we… let him slip through our fingers."

"At least… you didn't let him slip through the day he got..." Aomine didn't want to say it. His face contorted, but he spat out the word. "Raped."

Awful didn't describe what Aomine had felt when he found out Kuroko had been violated just hours after he'd met up with him. Awful couldn't describe the iciness that gripped him tight, the rushing emptiness in his ears, the way the world suddenly seemed to become small, suffocatingly small. He wanted to go back in time, shake some sense into his past self—but that was impossible. Regrettably impossible.

"I…" Midorima hesitated, feeling eyes drift up to focus on him. Probably, they thought he was going to say something along the lines of_ if I had listened to Oha-Asa that day…_

"I…" he started again. "I think… I should have seen first. I never told anyone; I even forgot about it. But, a few weeks before Kuroko had his accident—no, not an accident. A few weeks before Kuroko tried to commit suicide, he asked me… what I thought of people who commit suicide."

He could feel the tension in the air, almost felt the temperature in the room drop by a few degrees. He readjusted his glasses, licking his lips.

"I… ever since we confirmed that Kuroko had committed suicide, I have been thinking about it. At first, of course I was shocked. But then… I became angry. Because, I believed that suicidal people were… simply selfish and weak beings who took the easy route out of their difficulties in life. That's what I told to Kuroko; it's what I believed. And, what I could not believe is that Kuroko had turned into one of those people I hated so much."

His sentences came out short, choppy, so unlike how he usually spoke. Midorima almost regretted this confession, almost wanted to stop talking right then and there. He could tell by the way everyone sat—_he couldn't look into their eyes, not like this_—that this subject was one nobody had wanted to touch. Midorima took a deep breath and closed his eyes, feeling his heart thumping in his chest, a steady _thud, thud, thud_ that reminded him perpetually that he was alive and well while Kuroko was not.

"I had always respected Kuroko, ever since he was accepted as one of Teikou's starting members. I respected his style of basketball, his character, his goals. I knew him to be a boy with morals unlike those that we carried. Of course, after he entered Seirin, a no-name school that I thought would be incapable of using his abilities," Kagami rustled in his place, "I went ahead and told him that I was disappointed in him. That opinion changed, evidently," Midorima said. His eyes scanned the table, looking for a focus point. "…I changed. Looking back, meeting Kuroko was probably one of the best things that could have happened to me. I…" His eyes found a coffee stain on the flat, polished wood, and he stared unseeingly at it as he finished. "I really respected Kuroko.

"And then to find out that someone I had so much respect for had done something for which I had nothing but loathing…" Midorima stopped and cleared his throat. "I shouldn't be talking about this right now. These are just my personal feelings and have nothing to do with the original subject."

"No, no," Ichiru said suddenly. His head was tilted and on his face was a strange expression, one nobody could read. "Go on. This has everything to do with what we were talking about. How do you feel now? I mean, I don't mean to pry—well, yes, I _do_ mean to pry, but I need to know how you feel now."

Midorima was silent. His brow knitted and a frown claimed his face, making him look as he felt: conflicted. How did he feel now? What were his thoughts on Kuroko now? Why was he feeling so torn?

Kise cleared his throat and said quietly, "I don't know about Midorimacchi, but… well, I felt the same way as Midorimacchi at the beginning. I was kind of hurt that Kurokocchi would leave us all behind like that. Like, how could he hurt everyone else just to end his own pain? And it wasn't just because it was Kurokocchi. It's with everyone. That site Kurokocchi had posted on earlier—a lot of people go there trying to get attention by saying that they want to kill themselves. I was always concerned, but I couldn't help thinking, _really? Why? Don't you have someone to live for? People who care about you? Don't you think about them?_ And that's what I told them. I thought they were being silly, because no matter how down they might be today, there's always tomorrow, isn't there?"

Kise shifted uncomfortably. "But then, now that it's been a few days since we figured out what Kurokocchi did… there's been something nagging me. Like, what if I had been too harsh? Or what if I'd been wrong? I felt like a hypocrite of sorts, you know—just because it was my friend who had tried to commit suicide and not some random person I didn't know, I was suddenly feeling differently about the subject."

"Yeah… well…" Kagami cleared his throat awkwardly. "I… don't really agree with you guys. I can't completely understand what you're saying, and I don't know how to say this myself, but… Wasn't Kuroko just living for himself?"

"That doesn't make any sense," Aomine said. "He almost died, didn't he?"

"Yeah, but I mean… What you said about him trying to live for us instead of himself… isn't that just us being selfish?"

"Like wanting someone else to share their snacks with you when they're starving to death," Murasakibara added in a drawl.

"What he means is by forcing him to continue on living even while suffering," Akashi said quietly, "We turn into the selfish ones."

The hints of a smile were on Ichiru's face as he, as well as the others, zoned in on Akashi's words.

"Tetsuya, from what I've heard from all of you today and read for myself, had already suffered a lot, more than anyone should by the time he tried to commit suicide. He went on for another few months even after he was raped, even after his father threw him aside, even after his mother hung herself. Don't you think that was him struggling to hold onto his life? And think about Tetsuya, what you know about him, his personality." Akashi folded his hands on the table and looked down. "He was the type to put people before himself. Don't you think he would have tried to live for his friends after giving up on living for himself? When it finally got too much for him to bear, you could say at that point, he decided to steer his own life in the direction that he wanted. Rather than saying that it was a selfish action, I would consider it selfless." He lifted his eyes and looked at his own teammates, and what they saw in his mismatched eyes was empathy, a strange, strange empathy. "I don't think anyone here could imagine what he was going through, yet he endured this pain by himself so as to not bother anyone. And when he decided to die, he didn't let anyone know. He made it seem an accident to prevent us from worrying. Isn't that selfless?"

Silence was pregnant in the room; nobody could speak; nobody wanted to speak after that speech.

"It's hard, I know," Ichiru said gently. "I'm not trying to berate you guys or anything," he added hastily when he saw them flinch. "A lot of people think like you guys. I'm just trying to teach you a different way of seeing it. I myself used to think like you, so I can't say too much on the matter without seeming pretentious or be confident in my answers if you choose to ask me questions, but… it's just the way I feel. If you'll give me the soapbox to stand on, I can tell you a story."

"I had a friend once who'd occasionally have bouts of depression," Ichiru said. "I asked her why… and she told me a story of her childhood back when she used to live with her family in China. She was about eight, and had an uncle whom everyone loved. He'd let her drive—yeah, _drive_—at age eight, just to the market and back on clear days. Then, one day… things didn't go so well. There was a truck—and they were hit. And she told me how her uncle was bleeding all over, and how she was trying to drag him away over broken glass… Her uncle didn't make it, and she has scars to remind her of the incident.

"Her parents blamed her for the uncle's death. And still blame her. Some things were piling up in her life around the time that I met her, and she started talking about suicide. Instead of trying to help her…" Ichiru laughed at himself and shook his head. "Instead of trying to help her, I berated her. Told her off for considering killing herself. I got mad at her, telling her she was weak, melodramatic, and selfish, never realizing myself that I was doing more damage. Luckily, well, she got help in time, and she's still alive now, no thanks to me. I regretted it a lot afterwards, though… so it's why I just want to let you guys know that suicide isn't all that you think it is."

"But… why _didn't_ she think about the people she'd hurt? Why didn't Kurokocchi?"

"I'm sure they did," Ichiru said. "I have a hard time even now explaining why saying such a thing to a suicidal person isn't right… but… it's like… I don't know. I feel like if I were on the verge of taking my own life and someone said that to me, I would feel immensely guilty. It'd be like, I want to think about them, but I can't, so does that make me a horrible person? Isn't this another reason why I should disappear? Or on the other hand, I might get angry. Why do I have to think about them? It's my problem, not theirs… Should I kill myself to make them feel bad about what they'd said?

"I know I'm not saying it right, but… let's put it this way, I don't think it's selfish to want to end your own life. If you get hurt, you want the pain to stop, right? So you do stuff to stop it, like take painkillers and whatnot. Nobody stops you from doing that. When life hurts, you want to stop it, don't you? Don't lie; you're all still pubescent teenagers, and lord, do I know how dark and depressed you guys can get," Ichiru chuckled. "Think about it. Haven't you ever… just wanted to disappear?"

Aomine felt like he'd been punched in the gut. For some reason, his mind flashed back to that day under the bridge, the day he'd told Kuroko _I've forgotten._ To the days he'd spent almost lifeless because basketball, the thing he'd loved the most, was no longer the love of his life. He'd never considered kicking the bucket, but some days, it was hard to go on. Some days, it was too painful to touch a basketball.

"Some days it's just painful to live," Ichiru said, shrugging. "But in any case, ultimately, it's your life, and you get to decide what to do with your life. No one else should have the power to dictate how you live."

"So are you saying we shouldn't try to stop people from committing suicide?" Midorima asked.

"Well… this is where it gets complicated, see," Ichiru said, sighing. "I'm a huge stickler for human rights and such, and of course, deciding whether you want to live or die is a huge right. But for people who care about you and want you to live, whether it's to make themselves feel better or because they truly believe you have a future, of course they're not going to let you be, and it's their right to try to help you. I think it just comes down to a matter of how you encourage living. If you try to reason with them in a way that makes them the bad person, that's no good. But, if you go about it the right way, like trying to understand them and truly, truly look for a solution and stand by them through everything… then it's alright. Does that make sense?"

"Kind of…"

"And besides, who knows, maybe for some people, suicide is the act of ultimate selflessness," Ichiru said. "Didn't you ever have the thought that 'maybe it's better if I die… I won't bother anyone in that way'? I know I have.

"And then, in response to your 'easy way out,' is it really the easy way out? Death is frightening. At least, to me, it is. It must take a lot of guts to throw yourself into an oblivion about which you know nothing. Rather than thinking that the person is taking the easy way out, shouldn't you be more worried about how they're _willing_ to embrace death?

"Anyways, I've been talking way too much," Ichiru said, turning a little pink. "Sorry. It's just, this topic… once I get started, I talk a lot because I can't express myself clearly. I hope you guys got something out of that."

"This just makes me feel a whole lot worse," Kise grumbled, messing up his hair.

"Hey, this is what life is," Ichiru said, slapping Kise on the back. "You grow up, see change coming your way, whine about it, and then grow up some more. Anyways, it's getting late in the day. I'm going to go drop by and see Kuroko and my old man right now if you guys want to come along…"

"Thank you for the offer, but we'll have to ask you to send our regards to Tetsuya," Akashi said, standing up from the table. He nodded at the group. "We… have some business to attend to with Kuroko Taiyou."

"Ah, that bastard," Ichiru said, nodding approvingly. "Give him hell for me, will you?"

"With pleasure."

The glint in Akashi's eye told Ichiru that he wasn't lying when he spoke that sentence. Ichiru chuckled.

"And Kurokocchi's… that guy who did that to Kurokocchi… are you still not going to tell us his name?" Kise asked.

Ichiru shook his head. "I... well, I can't _not_ tell you now after hearing that story. Kuroko, it sounds, seems to be really important to you, isn't that so? So, well…"

Ichiru tore a corner off a piece of paper and wrote down two words. _Otori Katou._

"There you go. Oh… and sorry I can't help with Katou," Ichiru said, handing the paper to Akashi, who creased it neatly and put it away. He closed his eyes and took off his glasses. "I'm really, really sorry. I talked to you about growing up and messing up and then growing some more, but… I haven't grown at all. I'm just clinging onto an old man who'll probably not wake up anymore…"

"Well, we can't say don't worry about it," Aomine said gruffly. "Of course we hate you for letting that bastard slide with it for so long. But… your old man's important to you, and we all have something we want to protect more than anything else, so…"

"Wow, you sound so grown up," Ichiru laughed. He rubbed his eyes. "If I could make it up to Kuroko in any way… well, that makes me sound wishy-washy, and once I've sinned, I can't un-sin. I'm just gonna pour my will into you guys—so," he said, slapping Akashi on the back. Kise gasped in horror at the casual action. "Scary boy, go get him. Give Katou hell and a thousand years in jail, won't you?"

Akashi only smiled sinisterly and repeated the phrase from before.

"_With pleasure."_

* * *

"So we're going to see Tetsu's dad?" Aomine asked as they waved goodbye to Ichiru.

Akashi was about to nod when his phone rattled in his pocket. It was another text from Momoi.

"Hey, what's that look on your face for?" Aomine said, trying to look over Akashi's shoulder. His eyes widened.

_[Met Otori Katou. He's bad news. He asked me what I was doing in Seirin; I said I was Tetsu-kun's friend. He's taking me somewhere. Going out of cell phone range.]_

"That son of a…!"

"Change of plans," Akashi said in a voice so low and cold it sent shivers down their backs. "We're going to Seirin."

* * *

**Orange Prelude (First)**

**/Begin**

"I'm home," Kuroko said tiredly as he slipped his shoes off at the entrance.

Of course, there was no answer. Both his mother and father were at work, but he still announced his presence anyways. Ever since he was little, he liked the sound of _I'm home. _Because he wasn't really at home anywhere else. Not at school; maybe on the basketball courts; but at home, in his room, he blended in perfectly. Nobody had to care whether he was visible or unnoticeable; he could just curl up in bed with a book in his hands and escape.

His arm itched under his cast, but he couldn't do anything about it.

It was going to be okay. Seirin hadn't lost their match because of his absence. He didn't know whether to be relieved or to feel lost. On one hand, he was happy that his absence hadn't caused his team's loss, but on the other hand…

Didn't that mean they didn't need him?

Kuroko shook his head. This was not the way to think. He looked around his home, taking in the shabby house and feeling a little pang of guilt. Home wasn't so much of a home anymore. Ever since he'd broken his wrist, his parents had gotten into increasingly heated arguments over money—apparently, they didn't have much, and Kuroko's father was banking on the hope that Kuroko would get a scholarship for basketball in college. But now, with him being unable to play…

Kuroko's eyes dimmed a little.

The next day was one of the worst in his life. Aomine had gotten hurt because of him. Selflessly sacrificing himself to save Kuroko, he'd pushed him out of danger's way only to be injured himself. Kuroko stayed at the hospital for hours on end with his head bowed, elbows on knees, hands clasped together, eyes shut—

"Not your fault," were the first coherent words out of Aomine's mouth. "Nobody's."

_That's a lie, that's a lie, it's my fault you're like this, it's my fault—_

"So, then, Touou lost…?"

"Yes. Because of me. I'm so sorry, Aomine-kun. You do so much for me, yet I only end up hurting you."

He didn't know what words were flying out of his mouth, but he meant every syllable. Not until Aomine reached out to touch him with a concerned and pained look on his face while saying _What the—Tetsu, what's wrong with you?_ did Kuroko finally shut up. He left the room, and for some reason, he was almost crying, but he held it in until he was out of the hospital and in his room again.

He hid for a long time.

"Yo, Tetsu. Nice to finally see you."

"Hello."

"You've been avoiding me."

"I have not."

Aomine shoved his phone into Kuroko's face, showing him list after list of calls and sent texts. Kuroko's expression remained impassive.

"What's this all about, Tetsu?"

"I never got any of those. I changed my number, Aomine-kun."

"You're so frustrating! So I was just worrying over nothing!"

"Sorry."

Aomine grumbled and rubbed the back of his neck. "Forget it. Just exchange numbers with me now, and I'll forgive you this time, Tetsu. You been doing well?"

_No_, Kuroko wanted to say. _No, I haven't been. My parents have been fighting day and night because of me. My mother's becoming an alcoholic because she can't take the things my father says to her. My father treats me as if I don't exist. I hate not being able to play basketball and having to just watch from the sidelines. I hate having been the cause of your injury. You could have died. You could have died, and it would have been because of me._

But without skipping a beat, Kuroko replied, "Yes. And you?"

He felt his spirits rising the more he talked with Aomine. It felt good to be friends with the tanned boy again; too good to be true. The smile, though rare, reminiscent of Aomine's early middle school days, was back again; his laughs were cheerful and clear. He called him _Tetsu_, treated him like a person, a friend, not like trash on the ground as his father did.

And he could _see_ that there was something off about Kuroko, and maybe that was the one thing Kuroko really needed. Someone who realized that he wasn't really okay.

"But… Tetsu, more seriously. If there's anything wrong, you—you can come talk to me about it. I'm here for you, you know that?"

He could have sat down right then and told Aomine everything. He wanted to, so badly. But he didn't. He knew his deadpan face didn't betray a single expression as he said, "How uncharacteristically corny of you, Aomine-kun."

"S-Shut it!" Aomine said, struggling to fight the red rising to his face. "It's just been that lately, I've been hearing from Kise that you've been acting kind of funny… so, I was just—not worried about you or anything! Sheesh, forget it!"

And for the first time that day, Kuroko really smiled. It was sweet. Sweeter than a ripe orange on a summer day.

And then a day later, that smile never resurfaced.

Bruises on his wrists. Marks on his neck. Aching body. He didn't understand. What was going on? What had he done to deserve this? As he stumbled out of the room with his clothes askew and his hair mussed up, there was a weird taste in his mouth. It was sour. Sourer than a wrinkled orange on a winter day.

**Orange Prelude**

**/End**

* * *

Anon Review Replies:

**Guester**: Ahh, I'm relieved Ichiru came out fine. You're not cruel for liking to read this story… if you're cruel, what does that make me? XD Every so often, I look back on what I've written, and I just say to myself, "_Wow, I am truly, truly, an awful person."_ Thanks for the review! Cheers.

**danny:** It sounds like you've been through a lot; I just hope you can always stay strong, stay caring, and stay true. I wish I could give you a response as long as your review, but I would just end up rambling… so, cheers. Hope this chapter didn't disappoint, and I'm honored that you could find so many good points in this little story.

* * *

_First off, as always, thank you to the reviewers. I feel like you're all showing your support for people who have had to go through these things and really showing them that he or she is not alone in their suffering._

_Second, well, here's another chapter based on things that have happened to me—of course, in this story, they are a little different. If there was a left and right to beliefs on suicide, left being dislike and blame on the suicidal person and right being supportive and all, Ichiru would be more to the right than I am; however, most of what he said is based on my changes and experiences. I took the more 'right' sided arguments from some lady on a blog (forget which and where). The girl he was talking about is a girl in real life; what Ichiru said to her was similar to what I'd told her. She (irl) didn't try to commit suicide, and she wasn't at the point where she needed help, so thankfully, she is fine. _

_If you'll allow me a soapbox to stand on—it wasn't until this year that I started seeing suicide in a different light. And, I don't know whether to be ashamed of this or not, what changed me was a post on tumblr. Yep. A post on tumblr. I can't remember the exact words, but… it went something like this:_

"_Instead of calling them names, shouldn't we be worried about the fact that they think life is so bad that they're willing to consider death?"_

_And it was something that simple that got me thinking._

_I know a lot of people have very strong views on suicide. I'm sorry if this chapter was crude, callous, or otherwise offensive in any way. I just… I feel bad about the way I've been treating this issue. I look back on the time my sister tried to commit suicide and see that the entire family was very cold about the ordeal, when maybe that was the time when we should have been more caring and understanding than ever. (My sister is doing well, now.)_

_Anyways, hope this chapter was okay. You're all entitled to your own opinions, but I just hope to get your thinking pan heated up a little. Thanks, as always!_


	9. Chapter 9

When Momoi walked down the hallways of Seirin High, she couldn't help but feel nostalgic at the sight of the students squirming in their seats from boredom. She'd only been at Seirin once, and that was at the pool, yet the general atmosphere brought her back to days she looked upon with a fond eye. Chasing Aomine who was skipping class, heading to basketball practice at the end of school—all these things had ceased upon graduating high school. Now, they were mere memories, slight fragrances in the air that lingered long after being born.

She stopped at the door of one of the classrooms on the second floor, feeling something strange squirming in her stomach. She realized that this must be Kuroko's old classroom—_woman's intuition—_and stared into it through the dirty, smudged windows, wondering what Kuroko had been doing at this time two years ago, what he was feeling, where he sat, if he was happy or sad and why hadn't he told anyone, why couldn't she have been there for him, why, why, _why—_

"Ahh, what am I doing," Momoi chided herself. "Back to work."

She knew the teacher's lounge was somewhere on this floor; luckily for her, she found it in little to no time at all. It was vacant, and the door was even unlocked. She peeped in, wondering if she should dare to go inside and have a little look-see at some documents.

A hand settled on her shoulder, and she had to bite back a cry of surprise.

"Are you looking for someone?"

As calmly as she could, Momoi tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled as she turned around. She was looking at a yellow and pink striped tie littered with purple polka dots—_what kind of fashion sense does this person have—_and then her eyes traveled up to see a face whose expression she couldn't quite describe. It was readable, yet at the same time unreadable, and it made her uncomfortable.

"Um… Ah, well, I'm a friend of Kuroko Tetsuya," she said, deciding to go with the truth. "And I just wanted to talk to some of his teachers here regarding some things that happened two years ago."

A flash of something—_what, what was it, why couldn't she figure it out?—_ran across the man's face. His grip tightened momentarily; then, he lowered his hand and smiled down at her.

"Kuroko Tetsuya? What a coincidence. He happened to be one of my students back when he was still a second year. I'm Otori Katou. Your name?"

_Otori Katou, the cousin of Ichiru Hikaru, the man who's helping Tetsu-kun right now,_ Momoi immediately processed.

"Momoi Satsuki. It's nice to meet you."

"Same to you," Otori said, inclining his head. "Why don't we go somewhere else to discuss this? You're lucky I have a free period right now. My next class is after lunch, so we should have at least a good hour alone together."

"Mm," Momoi agreed. For some reason, her shoulders were rising, tensing; cold shivers were running down her spine. She didn't like that smile of his; she didn't know why she was getting so uncomfortable so quickly, she had just met the man. She slipped her cell phone out of her pocket, checking the time. 11:43.

"If you'll excuse me," Otori said, holding his own phone up. "A call."

Momoi nodded cautiously. Within a few blips, Otori was talking to someone.

"Yeah, it's me. It's time. Go ahead and do it." Smiling satisfactorily, Otori hung up and turned to Momoi. "So, Momoi-chan, I'm assuming you came here knowing what happened to Kuroko?" Otori said, leading her down a few hallways.

"Well, it was officially labeled as an accident_—_a malfunction of Tetsu-kun's brakes_—_and so nobody was at fault. But, I heard from my_—_well," she amended, seeing a keen gleam in Otori's eyes as she was about to reveal who had told her the news, "I heard that it was a suicide attempt." She fell into step just behind the man. "And I wanted to see if there was anything any of his teachers noticed during Tetsu-kun's stay here."

"'Tetsu-kun'? Were you two close?"

"Mm," she said. "We went to middle school together."

"That's nice. So, how did you find out that Kuroko tried to commit suicide?"

The hallways were getting darker, more deserted. Momoi stopped, the teacher following suit when he noticed her hesitation.

"Is there something wrong?"

Something was kicking in Momoi's gut like a frightened rabbit. She fingered her cell phone again and licked her lips.

"I just remembered that I left the stove on," she lied easily. "I'll make a quick text to my brother. He set the frying pan on fire just the other day, can you believe it?" Otori's eyes were sharp as Momoi slowly pulled out her phone and began typing on the touch screen. "I'll just tell him right now."

The bars on her phone that indicated signal strength were faltering. She was amazed that her fingers weren't shaking as she typed out a quick message to Akashi.

_[Met Otori Katou. He's bad news. He asked me what I was doing in Seirin; I said I was Tetsu-kun's friend. He's taking me somewhere. Going out of cell phone range.]_

"Finished?"

"Yup!" Momoi said. She tucked her phone away in her pockets, but kept her hand inside, trying to feel around for something loose—change, paper anything. Her hand clasped around a few coins, which jangled softly. She shot a look up at Otori. He didn't seem to notice. Surreptitiously, she slid one coin from her pocket and managed to drop it on her shoe as she put her foot forward. Then, without a single sound, she let it slip to the floor.

_[Look coins]_

When Otori wasn't looking, she sent that final message to Akashi, purposely tripping over her feet to gain time. When she was up again, the message had gone through, and the last bar of signal had fluttered out of existence. They turned another corner—_why was this school so large, so deserted—_and Momoi let fall another coin, smiling calmly at Otori when he turned to look at her.

"After you," he said, turning on the lights to an empty classroom. A quick scan told Momoi that once inside, nobody would be able to see her. The blinds were down, and moreover, there was a door at the back of the classroom that looked as if it led to a small closet. Otori was looking at her, now. She only smiled.

She knew now what had happened to Kuroko.

She knew now that it was very possible that it would be happening to her, too.

* * *

"Why aren't our messages going through?"

Kise shook his phone when the _message not delivered_ notice appeared again on his screen.

"Calm down, Ryouta," Akashi said. "She said she was going out of cell phone service range."

"How can you be so calm about this?" Aomine growled. "This damn car, can't it go any faster?"

Akashi sent him a warning look from the driver's seat.

"I'm telling you, it'd've been faster if Murasakibara ran to the school with me riding on his shoulders," Aomine grumbled, folding his arms. He craned his neck, looking hopelessly at the congested roads filled with workers heading out for their lunch breaks.

"Kise, if I could borrow your phone," Midorima said suddenly. Looking puzzled, Kise handed the phone over. With practiced motion, Midorima typed in the Ohayo Asahi Uranai address and plugged Kise's headphones into his ears.

"Midorimacchi, _now_ of all times?" Kise said. Midorima tsked. "Actually, I'm surprised you're looking it up only now. I thought it was part of your daily routine or something."

"There was no time…" Midorima said. He motioned at Kise to shut up; Oha-Asa was beginning.

He listened attentively, taking note that Taurus was number one in luck today. Lucky item for Taurus was a coin purse; for Cancers, it was—

"_Your lucky item today is a cell phone! Keep it close!_"

_A cell phone…_

A chill ran down Midorima's spine. Kise saw the expression he was making and went suddenly quiet.

"Midorimacchi…?"

He couldn't hear Kise, not over the sound of the blood rushing in his ears and the rapid _thump thump thump_ emanating from his heart. He could hardly force his diaphragm to expand as that all-too-cheerful voice rang in his ears. It was the only thing he could hear, the only thing he was focused on.

Why was this happening again?

"_Cancers, be careful! Watch out for your precious things, or you might end up losing them!"_

Those exact words from one year ago.

_Someone close to you. You didn't think it could be someone 'close to you' that you would end up losing that day, did you Midorima Shintarou?_

_If only he had been more careful—_

That gruesome day; it haunted him now; he felt the phone slip from his fingers, heard Kise's cry of concern; he felt and heard, yet at the same time, he didn't feel or hear anything—

"_Isn't that Kurokocchi up there?"_

"_Seems so. I never knew he could ride a bike."_

"_I know, right? He seems more the type to fall off as soon as he got on."_

"_That's mean, Dai-chan!"_

"_Wait—something seems weird."_

"_What's he doing?! That idiot! The light's red!"_

"_Maybe the brakes are—the brakes aren't working?"_

"_He's going too fast—Dai-chan, you won't make it!"_

"_Shut up! At least I can try!"_

"_Hurry and call the ambulance, Momoi! Aomine and Akashi won't make it, so hurry and call!"_

_There was a horrible honk, a horrible screech, a horrible crash, and Midorima, though he could not believe his eyes, saw that small body lift into the air. He watched it tumble, saw it descend from the bright blue skyline. He didn't see it land, and he wasn't sure if he _wanted_ to see it land, but he could tell by the screams from the pedestrians that it was bad—_

_He was running now, Momoi behind him. The traffic had stopped completely; the driver was stumbling out of his car, looking whiter than a sheet. Midorima was pushing people aside, not caring if they fell over or shouted at him for being rude—that's right, he didn't care, he didn't care, he didn't care; the only thing he cared about was—_

"_Kurokocchi! Kurokocchi, please!"_

"_Tetsu, get a grip!"_

_"God, no, Kurokocchi! Wake up!"_

_"Stop, Kise! Stop hitting him! You're only making it worse!"_

_"How can it be any worse? How can there be something worse than—oh god, are those his bones? Shit, his bones are showing through! Where are the ambulances?!"_

_He could see the two of them on their knees on the asphalt, shaking something, holding something close. Midorima almost stumbled. A large hand caught him effortlessly and held him up._

"_Midochin, you called the ambulance?"_

"_Y-Yes—Kuroko, how is—"_

"_Kurochin… is…"_

_Midorima couldn't speak for a moment, then finally he croaked out, "Is he… Is Kuroko dea—"_

"_No!" Kise shouted defiantly, but the despair, the hurt, the panic in his voice was piercing. "No! Come on, Kurokocchi, wake up—come on!"_

_Kise looked up, catching Midorima's eyes as he moved forward with Murasakibara who continued to hover and act as a barrier between Kuroko and the crowd. The clouded pain, the utter helplessness, the words _please help Kuroko, please, oh, god, please_ wheeling in Kise's eyes shook Midorima to the core. _

_He could see Kuroko's body now, limp, unmoving, pale, and above all, stained red. __Blue eyes that were half open, dull, unseeing, lightless. Blue eyes with red blood running into them. Red on blue; red on bright blue._

_It was at that moment that Midorima's world suddenly became smaller than a grain of sand. He felt so ineffably _useless_, so _worthless_ simply standing there, only able to watch—_

_"__Strange…"_

_"__What? Akashi, you can still talk about weird things even in this sort of situation? How are you so calm?!"_

_"__Calm down, Mine-chin…"_

_"__No, this whole thing is strange when you think about it."_

_"__Save it for later! The ambulances are here, get out of the way!"_

_Unable to help Kuroko, Midorima could only stand and watch and feel terror flooding his very bones as the paramedics came and tried to revive Kuroko. He felt less significant than a statue; a statue at least was displayed for aesthetics, but him, Midorima—what was he there for? So useless, incapable of doing anything but watching and waiting as Kuroko died—_

"Midorimacchi?"

With a jolt, Midorima returned to the present. He took deep breaths, closing his eyes, trying to calm himself. _Look at me,_ he scoffed. _Because of mere words dispensed by a fortune-telling site, I'm reduced to this…_

"Midorimacchi, what happened?"

He could feel all their eyes on him. He shook his head.

"Just… Oha-Asa today, the advice… was the same as that of a year ago on May 19. 'Your lucky item is a cell phone… Be careful… watch out for your precious things, or you might end up losing them."

"It was exactly the same?" Aomine asked, looking unnerved. "You're sure?"

"Of course I'm sure!" Midorima almost snapped. He inhaled sharply; he had to get a grip on himself. More calmly, he repeated, "Of course I'm sure. I would… never forget anything about that day."

Of course the precious thing today would be Momoi Satsuki, would it not? It made sense, knowing now that she was in danger. The gravity of the situation pulled at his heart, dragging it down to the pit of his stomach like concrete weights. It wouldn't be…

It couldn't be Kuroko again, could it?

Midorima shook his head, scoffing at his baseless fears. Kuroko was in the hospital, hooked up to a life-support machine and with nurses and doctors constantly monitoring him. $8000 a day was poured into his care.

Of course he would be fine.

Midorima breathed in. Akashi was pulling into the parking lot of Seirin High. He turned off the engine and unbuckled his seat belt.

"We're here."

* * *

Momoi could feel her skin crawling as Otori paced around her. He was taking his time, relishing it, probably still believing that Momoi was completely oblivious to what he was about to do to her.

But she knew. Oh, she knew.

She could tell by the way his eyes raked her body. How many times had she experienced that look? Countless. It had been better when she had still hung around Aomine; at least his surly face and posture would keep the hungry away.

She had to stall. Somehow, she'd managed to spend five minutes just going into the classroom, and another five exploring the room. A blackboard in the front, three rows of ten desks each in the room, a teacher's desk at the back, a cloth hanging from the ceiling as a decoration, a string of Christmas lights running across the wall, and a closet in the corner. The curtain was hanging from a steel rod attached with thin, fraying strings to the ceiling. The lights drooped sadly from two nails hammered into the walls. The door handle to the closet had a lock on it. She had no doubt that if Otori were to make a move on her, he would bring her to the back of the room, shove her into the closet and—

She shuddered, not wanting to even think about it.

She smiled serenely, forbidding anything other than innocent amiableness from showing on her face.

"So, about Tetsu-kun… do you know anything that might have happened to him?"

Otori waved a lazy hand. "Oh, a lot of things happened to Kuroko. He broke his wrist in a basketball match and dropped out of the club—"

"Tetsu-kun did?" Momoi blurted in shock.

Otori smiled at her. "Didn't you hear from your friends? Just after break started, for some reason or another, he resigned from the club. It was quite a shock to everyone," Otori said. Momoi could see delight curling around his face. "Quite a shock."

"Do you know why…?"

"Like I said, 'for some reason or another,'" Otori said, shrugging. He came closer and sat down on the desk in front of Momoi. She licked her lips and played with her phone in her hands. It was 12:12.

"Mm…" Momoi said, scanning the room and then her phone. 12:13.

"Kuroko was a rather special student of mine," Otori said. "We were… very close."

"Were you?" Momoi asked slowly. She began swinging her legs and gave Otori an endearing smile. Watched him sweat. "In what way?"

Otori leaned closer to her. She could feel his breath. She heard her heartbeats hammering in her ears, but she kept her smile pasted on her face as naturally as she could.

"I could show you."

She put a finger into his palm, watching his own fingers curl around it. "You could show me."

12:14. Momoi spent the next minute staring into Otori's eyes. He held onto her finger, and she kept swinging her legs until her foot kicked Otori in the shin. He jolted, and the grip on her finger tightened, almost pulling her forward and into him.

"Sorry," Momoi said, looking upset. Otori shook his head and released her.

"We had a project we were working on together," Otori said, finally drawing away. "I kept it in the back closet. Never had the heart to take it out after what happened to poor Kuroko. Would you like a look?"

12:15. Momoi twirled a finger in her hair, then ran a thumb across her lips.

"What kind of project was it?" she asked. Smoothly, she slipped off the desktop and ambled around the room, pretending to examine the cloth on the wall. Right underneath the rod was a nail off of which one end of the string of lights hung. She tugged lightly on the Christmas lights until one end slipped off its nail. 12:17.

"Oh, no," she said, picking up the string of lights with a finger. She tiptoed, trying to put it back on the nail, but it was just out of reach.

"I can get that for you."

Otori came up behind her and put his hand over hers. He lifted it high, towards the nail. She could feel him pressing against her, and his hot breaths blew past her ear. It was nauseating. How long he was planning on holding her in that position with one arm outstretched and the rest of her body almost jammed against the wall, she didn't know. She transferred the Christmas lights to his hand and held her breath, hoping he wouldn't drop them, and caught the edge of the cloth with her hand.

She put her unoccupied hand against the wall, keeping an air cushion between her and the wall. The rod that held the cloth up began to swing. She could feel Otori move against her. He was still holding the lights. She held her breath. Watched the rod swing. Felt his hand on her hip. Fought the shivers running through her body. Swing, swing, swing—

With all her weight, Momoi yanked on the cloth just as the rod reached the zenith of its swing and ducked as the strings popped and the rod came shooting down right into Otori's head. Howling, he stumbled back, gripping onto Momoi's clothes, but she broke his hold with a swift chop to his wrist. Otori fell, the rod with him, and the cloth covered him from head to toe. Momoi saw, to her grim delight, that Otori was still holding the lights. She could see a dark spot growing on the cloth—_blood, wonderful_—and counted to three. Otori was writhing underneath the cloth, but the fabric was long and heavy. Just as he stood, Momoi swung her leg at his feet, making him tumble and fall directly onto the line of lights, the end of which he was still holding in his hand. He was kicking, trying to get free from the cloth, but he was rolling around, winding the fabric around him more tightly, and in the process, wrapping the lights around himself, too.

Momoi grabbed the other end of the lights and stomped on the part of Otori's hand that she could see. He bellowed in pain and released the wires; Momoi kicked him where she thought his stomach was, and as expected, he rolled over. She held both ends of the wires so that they crossed his legs as he turned, then pulled them tightly and managed to loop them around his legs once more before she took both ends of the wires and tied them in the best and tightest Devil's knot she could manage with Otori wriggling and flailing in the cloth.

Panting, she scrambled back as soon as the knot was complete. She could barely stand, she was shaking so much from a combination of fear and relief. She hadn't expected her plan to work so well. A lucky break. Just as she was about to turn to make her escape, the door burst from its hinges. She almost screamed, but when she saw six boys trample into the room, she could only laugh and cry in relief.

"Satsuki!" Aomine yelled as soon as he saw her. "Satsuki, are you okay? What even happened?"

"Dai-chan!" Momoi said, never feeling happier to see her childhood friend. She practically fell into his arms, finally feeling her legs go weak at the knees. He caught her and held her close, almost nuzzling his face in her hair out of relief. Out of the blue, he felt a peculiar sensation in his stomach with her in his arms, something that was more than just relief. "I'm okay."

"Hey, Momoi…" Kagami said. He pointed into the corner where a piece of cloth seemingly had been possessed. "What's that…?"

"If it's what I think it is," Akashi said, the faintest trace of amusement in his voice, "It just might be Otori Katou."

He walked over to the writhing mass and used a foot to kick open the wrapped cloth. He smiled.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Otori Katou," Akashi said to Otori's red face. "Wouldn't you say the same?"

Whatever Otori might have said turned into a groan as Murasakibara sat down on top of him.

"Assault… I'm gonna charge you all with assault…"

"Excuse me?" Akashi said. He bent over slightly. "What was that? I do believe that you'll find that once Tetsuya wakes up, you will be the one to face charges of assault… if not earlier than that."

"Hah!" Otori said. Murasakibara, not liking that pretentious laugh, dug his fist into Otori's stomach. Otori groaned, but still smirked. "You think Kuroko's going to wake up?"

Akashi's eyes flashed.

"As if. As soon as that bitch over there arrived saying that she was his friend, I knew the gig was up. I called up my own friends over at the hospital and gave them the go signal."

"The go signal?"

Otori laughed. "To pull the plug. Press the button. Goodbye, Kuroko."

Murasakibara slammed his fist next to Otori's face so hard that the linoleum floor cracked. Midorima stood, stunned.

Was this what Oha-Asa was talking about?

What was this fate, really?

_Why must these things happen to Kuroko? No…_

_Why must these things happen at all?_

A sudden river of disgust coursed through Midorima's entire being, and so badly did he want to kick Otori Katou in his laughing face.

But Akashi beat him to it.

As Otori coughed, spitting blood, they were all dumbfounded beyond comprehension. Akashi had never been one for physical violence; even Kagami knew that though Akashi had once aimed a stab at his face with a pair of scissors. He didn't like to get his hands dirty, they all knew. He preferred mental torture to physical pain.

"Leave, all of you," Akashi said quietly. "I'll handle this… thing here. The rest of you, get outside as quickly as you can. Call the police and tell them this room number. Take my keys," he said, tossing the jangling ring to Midorima, "and drive my car to the hospital."

"Are you sure? What about you?"

"I'll use the bus, after I'm done with this," Akashi said. "Quickly."

Half wanting to see what sort of pain Akashi would deal out to Otori and half frightened of what Akashi would do, they bolted out the door and down the hall.

"How did you do that anyways?" Aomine asked Momoi. She smiled and chuckled.

"I figured he was the type of person to hold onto whatever he was holding tighter under stress or pain," she explained. "I let him hold my finger and then kicked him in the shin. When he tightened his hold, I knew what I had to do."

"Damn," Aomine said, grinning. "Remind me to never get on your bad side, Satsuki."

"I got lucky."

Murasakibara ruffled his hand in Satsuki's hair. Midorima, meanwhile, had called the police and informed the rest of the group that the officers were already on their way.

"And you guys saw the coins, then?" Momoi asked.

"Yeah," Aomine said. "As soon as Akashi got your second message, he seemed to know what you were planning. He had us split up and run down all the hallways we could and told us to keep a look out for coins on the floor. Kagami found the first one and called Akashi, who alerted the rest of us, and then we were on our way." He paused, looking apologetic. "Sorry we couldn't get there in time, Satsuki."

"No, you guys came just in time," she replied with a smile. "Thanks for running over here."

The sun hit them with the full force of a spring sun as they burst out the building and into the parking lot. It was a day of such clear blue skies…

"Oh, come _on_, what's going on now?!" Kagami could have yelled. "You bastard, what do you think you're doing?"

"I'm so sorry! Just that car—he was coming so fast that I swerved!"

Akashi's car was crushed from the rear end by a sleek blue car. Another red car sat further down the parking lot corridor, the driver yelling angrily into his phone.

"You're _kidding_ me," Aomine groaned.

Momoi said, "Is there anyone we know at the hospital? Anyone we could call?"

Midorima suppressed a shudder. _Your lucky item is a cell phone._

"I don't know—didn't you visit often? Shouldn't you have the nurse's number, or the doctor's?"

"What about Ichiru-san?" Kagami said. "Did anyone get his number? He should be over there by now, right?"

"We can't trust that nothing will happen even with him there," Midorima said. "Kagami, are there any members of Seirin who live close by? Call them all. Kise, look up the next bus."

He turned away once he heard Kagami connect (_Ah, senpai, it's an emergency)_ and saw Kise cross his eyes at the small screen. The police were arriving, four, five, six cars. Four officers dispatched towards the crash, four into the building, and the other four stepped out of their cars.

"Maybe we should tell the police?" Momoi said. "Do you think they'd believe us?"

"Are you crazy? They'd probably say we've been watching too many horror movies."

"But we did report Otori," Momoi persisted.

Aomine looked from Momoi to the police before letting out a strangled sigh and jogging to the nearest officer. After a few wild gestures and a bit of shouting, Aomine ran back.

"They said they'd take us," he informed them excitedly. "Three to a car, come on!"

"What about Akashi?"

"Ah, damn it! Then, we'll wait, I guess? Look there he is now, with Otori—in handcuffs, hell yes."

Otori was shoved roughly into the back of a car, looking as if his brain had been bleached nine times over—and considering that he had probably faced the full brunt of Akashi's wrath, none of them were surprised. They ran to Akashi, who looked severely displeased upon seeing them all before them.

"What's going on?" were the first words out of Akashi's mouth. "Why are you all still here—"

He saw his rear-ended car and sighed.

"Very well. Have we another mode of transportation?"

"Cops said they'd take us," Aomine said. Akashi looked behind him at the officers, one of whom was speaking rapidly to his partner. Nodding, the officer jogged to their group and pointed behind him.

"Got my partners to agree to let you come with us," he said. "No more than three to a car, okay? We won't use sirens because we're not sure if this is actually an emergency."

"I'm telling you, man—"

"Cut some slack, kid," the officer said sharply. "Without me, you wouldn't have a ride. This is all I can do for you, and my partners already think I'm nuts. I'll come into the hospital with you, just in case there really is an emergency, but that's all. Get in, we're leaving now."

Three cars left the parking lot in a hurry. Luckily, lunchtime congestion seemed to have died down, so the drive to the hospital was relatively quick. As they tumbled out the cars, shouting their thanks, they ran into Kiyoshi and Hyuuga, who looked hassled and worried as they jumped off the bus.

"What's going on, you guys? Kagami said it was an emergency, so we rushed over here as fast as we could—Izuki said he's on his way now, and so are Koganei, Tsuchida, and Mitobe, but—"

"Details for later," Kagami shouted over his shoulder. They slammed through the hospital doors, the police officer making protesting noises behind them, leaving Kiyoshi and Hyuuga to run after them.

They skirted past the wheelchairs, the nurses, the doctors, who gave them polite nods and pointed them down the right hallways. Up the stairs, past the patients, past the rooms that smelled of disinfectant and death. Now, they were there; now, they were staring in silence; now, they were listening to the beeps of the nearby machines hooked up to a heartbeat.

"Who is that?!" Aomine yelled. No blue hair, no pale skin—instead, a girl with black hair lay deathly silent in the bed. "Where's Tetsu?!"

"Visitors, please stay quiet," a nurse said, frantically running over. Aomine would have lunged for her, but Murasakibara grabbed his head to hold him back. Akashi rested a hand on the nurse's shoulder.

"Do you know the person who used to occupy this room?" he asked quietly. "Kuroko Tetsuya?"

"Ah, Kuroko-kun," the nurse said, nodding. "The boy who was here for a little over a year, right?"

Akashi breathed in sharply. "Why isn't he here anymore?"

Her face contorted, a strange gleam in her eyes. He felt his heart drop below his toes.

"Don't you know? This morning, Kuroko-kun—" She began to cry.

Akashi's hand fell limply from her shoulder.

* * *

**Silent Prelude (Second)**

**/Begin**

Why he was here…

Why he was even alive…

He didn't know.

He needed help; he knew that much. But he couldn't get it. He didn't want it. He didn't _deserve_ it. If he asked his father, his father would laugh at him. If he asked his mother, she would give him a puzzled smile and say _it's only a part of puberty, darling_. If he told his friends—he couldn't tell his friends. He couldn't worry them and besides—

—He was ashamed.

He looked at himself in the mirror, saw the bags under his eyes. The marks on his skin, the look on his face. He watched his own eyes widen, then everything went blurry and he was crouching on the ground, curled up tightly with his hands clenching his hair in a white-knuckle grip.

_It's okay. It's okay._

He couldn't even tell himself that without feeling himself tense up.

"_It's okay. Kuroko, this is okay. You won't report me, right? You can't."_

It's okay, he told himself. You're going to be okay. You've been through so much already; you can get through a little more.

He squeezed his legs together tightly, feeling something sour rise up his throat. He was breathing fast, but shallowly, breaths getting shorter, thinner, softer until he was barely breathing at all…

After what seemed an eternity, Kuroko stood up on shaky legs. He collapsed onto his bed, burying his face in the pillow. When he saw the blackness, he wondered what it would be like to die.

Black?

White?

Nothing?

_What's death like?_

He needed help; he knew that much. But he couldn't get it. He didn't want it. He didn't _deserve_ it. All this time, he'd been causing everyone so much trouble… from Aomine to his parents to his friends… he'd failed so many times to please his parents… that's all he was—a failure. Ever since middle school, it should have been obvious that the only thing he could do was disappoint… that the only way to get around that fact was to hide away the things he couldn't do and make do with the things he could do—like with basketball. And yet, still, despite his efforts, he was…

So many years later, he could still hear those words ring like bells from a mourning church.

"_Passes…? To who…? Even though I can win all by myself, against anyone without your passes?"_

_Useless._

His cell phone began to vibrate on his bed. He took a look; it was Aomine. His fingers brushed his phone, but he couldn't bring himself to grab it. He was so torn inside that he could feel tears coming to his eyes. Part of him wanted to cry into the phone, to have someone to spill his guts out to; the other part didn't want to talk to anyone, see anyone, interact with anyone. That part of him wanted to stay secluded in his room without social contact, to be wrapped in solitude, where it was calm, quiet, consistently unchangeable…

And he hated himself for that, too. He knew he needed help, but didn't accept that fact. Maybe he was frightened that telling someone what had happened would force himself to admit that everything he'd experienced was real. Maybe he was hoping that he would wake up the next day to find that it all had been a too-long, terrible dream. Maybe he thought that by communicating his story with any one person, that one person would be proof of the fact that Kuroko's life had been slapped out of his control. And maybe Kuroko was simply afraid that in reality, he was just_…_

_Weak._

On his bed—his own bed in his own house where he should have felt safe—he rustled. He didn't want to close his eyes despite his fatigue. Every time he did, he could feel those hands on his body, hear that sickening sound of skin on skin, those sounds, that voice. He could hear his own voice crying out _stop_ and _please_ in pain and in sickening, disgusting pleasure that escaped his lips despite the terrifying situation. There was a black hole in his heart and it was eating away at his innards, shoving them into ice-cold water, drenching him in guilt and disgust, making his heart throw itself against his chest violently in intermittent spasms, making his head light and fuzzy…

_How long am I going to writhe in self-pity?_

There was another reason…

_Another reason…_

To hate himself…

_To die._

He was stronger than this_ (strong)_. He could handle this; he wouldn't be weak (_I can be strong) _and consider death. Things would get better (_I won't let this affect me)_. Time would heal him. He would forget, soon, the feeling of something he hated (_forget, please, forget)_. He would paste on that apathetic face of his as he always did and live life as normal.

"I'm okay. It's okay."

He buried his face in his pillow. His tears never got a chance to breathe.

The door downstairs opened. Both his parents were home. They were fighting again (_because of you it's all because of you)_ and it was because of him _(always you)_. He heard the angry voices, not the words, heard his mother crying _(hate that noise mom please don't cry)_ heard his father laugh, the door slam, and then the footsteps up the stairs _(don't come in don't look at me please)._

His bedroom door opened. He pretended to be sleeping. He heard the distinct sharp click of a tongue and the words _sleeping already? Worthless._ The door closed. He felt hot tears leaking from his eyes, shoved his head further into the pillow.

_Get a grip._

When school started again, he maxed his lack of presence and simply vanished. Nobody saw him; nobody remembered him. He slipped away as soon as breaks began, once almost running into Kagami who had sprinted to his classroom to see if he was there. He wanted to reach out, call out to him, ask him _'am I going to be alright?'_ but he never did.

"_If you report me… that redhead friend of yours, maybe I'll take him to my house next time instead?"_

"_You couldn't. Ka-Kagami-kun is stronger than I am. Stronger than you. Stronger than anybody."_

"_Cute. I guess I'd bring friends. The more the merrier, or so they say."_

"_No… Please… I won't…"_

"_Shh… there's a good boy."_

Kuroko saw Kagami looking for him. He saw the rest of the basketball team turning over every stone, looking in every corner for him. He never answered their calls. It was for the best. He wouldn't feel right acting like everything was normal after what happened to him. He was dirty. They weren't. Yet he still found himself hoping that they would find him. Sometimes, he lingered a bit too long at the top of the stairs until Izuki or Hyuuga caught sight of him, and then he would disappear just as the other reached him.

"Damn it, Kuroko!" he would hear them shout. "Why are you hiding like this?!"

He allowed himself to be seen, but he was careful, so careful to never let himself be caught.

Each day, one after the next, he went home. Each day, he collapsed onto bed, unmotivated. His grades dropped; he struggled, but he was like a fish floundering on land. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't do it. Words swam before his eyes. Everything he'd ever done wrong in his life came and haunted him; every movement made on him on that terrifying day came and tormented him.

He needed help; he knew that much. But he couldn't get it. He didn't want it. He didn't _deserve_ it.

His phone was ringing again. It was Aomine.

_"But… Tetsu, more seriously. If there's anything wrong, you—you can come talk to me about it. I'm here for you, you know that?"_

His hand hovered so close to the phone, he could feel the faint tremors of the vibration. The light on the screen of his phone snapped off and his room was quiet again. Too late did he grasp the phone. He held the silent, still object up.

He let it slip from his fingers.

**Silent Prelude**

**/End**

* * *

**Anon Review Reply:**

**Guester:** Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying the fic!

**Guest:** A happy ending would be nice, I agree. I'd say this update was relatively quick, wouldn't you? ;)

**Lone Heart: **Believe in yourself and don't give up! More than likely there are people who are or will be glad to have you. I don't really know what I'm saying; I'm so horrible at giving advice/saying things, but all I really want to say is for you to stay safe and strong! I'm glad that you were able to get that last puzzle piece from that story; it really makes me happy that I'm able to reach people like that. Once again, thanks, and stay safe and strong!

**Kurosaki Yukia**: I'm impressed with myself for getting this out so quickly XD Thanks for the review! And can I just mention that that face is absolutely adorable? XD

**Danny:** Gosh, I really admire your strength! It's amazing you were able to draw that strength and mindset from whatever you've gone through. I wish I could have been that mature when I was fifteen (which was not long ago at all!). I'm glad you're enjoying the story, and thanks, as ever, for the feedback.

* * *

_I hope Momoi wasn't horrendously OOC. This is my first time writing her, so I'm a bit nervous ^^;_

_Thanks as always for the feedback. Hopefully, I was a little faster about the review replies than usual XD I got some PMs from people (and some reviews) saying how I put suicide in a different light-you have no idea how happy and touched that makes me feel. At the same time, it felt really strange. _

_Anyways, I have about two or three more chapters planned for this story. The last chapter will be the hardest and might take a long while. _

_Thank you all again! Stay safe, strong, and happy._


	10. Chapter 10

_A/N: To avoid confusion and possibly mass hysteria (__ㅋㅋㅋ__), everything in this chapter happens in the past, when they were 17-18ish._

* * *

**Scathing Prelude (Third)**

**/Begin**

"Yo, Tetsu. What's that on your arm?"

Kuroko froze, his heart halting its functions for what seemed an eternity. His eyes were transfixed on the bit of skin showing on his wrists—the bruises that had still yet to fade.

_Don't look at them, please._

Feeling dirty, too dirty, he lowered his arms quickly, shaking his sleeves over the ugly marks.

"Tetsu?"

He had to fight hard not to flinch.

_Don't ask me, please._

"I… fell down the stairs."

The worst possible scenario ever. He hadn't wanted anyone to find out, ever. The looks on their faces he didn't want to imagine; and over everything else, he was scared to find out how they would treat him. Like something dirty? Scathingly? Or would they try to act overly sweet, like a peach rotten to the core?

"You… just… if you have any problems when you go home, just call me and I'll hijack a car or something to take you away, alright?"

"I'm counting on you, then."

"Yeah."

"See you, Aomine-kun."

It was worse the second time.

After seeing Ichiru, Kuroko remembered that his math teacher had said he would be visiting that night. Feeling obligated to at least show his face, he turned Aomine down though his heart screamed at him to _leave leave leave_ and walked with heavy steps to his home. He was lost in his thoughts and was rudely jostled back to reality when someone bumped into him. He looked up, felt his heart go cold.

"Oh, hey, Kuroko. Didn't expect to see you here."

No. No, not here. Not now.

"Mind helping me carry this to my apartment? I just bought it and was about to call some friends up to help me haul it, but since you're already here, why not help?"

Kuroko's feet scraped the pavement, almost turning him around to run back to Aomine, back to Ichiru, back to safety.

Almost.

He couldn't run. He was trapped under that hungry gaze, the leering, jeering, scathing gaze.

And it was worse the second time.

He remembered stumbling home, but remembered nothing else. When he woke, he wasn't in his room, but in a stranger's. He began to shake.

"Kuroko?"

Ichiru?

"Kuroko… it's your teacher, Ichiru. I, uh… well, I guess you'll want to know where you are. You're at my place… I brought you here about an hour ago after I, um… found you. Um… so… yeah."

Kuroko said nothing.

"I'll… leave you alone for now, okay? Unless you want me to stay, in which case I'd be more than willing, but…"

"Where's my father?"

"What?"

"My father. I know I went home, or at least I think I did."

"L-Like I said, I found you…"

"Was he there?"

"I—"

"Please don't lie."

"Kuroko, I'm so sorry…"

"I understand. Thank you, Ichiru-sensei. I… just want to be alone right now."

"Okay," Ichiru said softly. "I'll be right outside if you need anything. Don't hesitate to ask."

He remembered Kise telling him about a forum he often visited. Before he knew it, he had pulled out his phone and was on that site. If he posted his story, what would people say? Would, by some chance, Kise see it? Would he say something to Kuroko? Would he tell him it was okay, it was going to be okay, he would be okay, it would be alright despite the fact that he had been twice sullied, despite the fact that his father had abandoned him, despite the fact that Kuroko's life was spiraling out of control—

He could barely type; his tears were falling so fast and thick.

_[Phantom11 January 24, 1:59_

_I was sexually assaulted twice. I won't go into details. I don't want to relive it._

_He let me go. The first time, he said he would hurt one of my friends if I ever reported him. I started avoiding my friend after that, not wanting to get him into trouble._

_The second time was today, just a few hours ago after I met a friend. I went… home afterwards, I think. I'm not really sure._

_I feel dirty. Disgusting. I want to cleanse myself, but I can't. I can't stand this feeling; I can't look at myself in the mirror without seeing what was done to me. When I think about what happened, an inexplicable panic takes over me, and I almost hyperventilate, then I almost stop breathing. I tense up, and can't do anything for several moments until I finally regain control over myself. I feel so dirty. I want to escape. It's like I've been plunged into a place without light or even darkness—a place so empty that I want to escape no matter what it takes._

_Can someone help me?]_

Minutes later, something happened that was like a miracle—a response from Kise himself. Kuroko could feel his heart soar; he knew he could depend on Kise, Kise was there for him, it was going to be alright—

_[Taseri Kiyou: What the heck? Youre disgusting. Why didnt you fight back? Why did you let him do that to you? I bet you provoked him! People like you who push the blame on the other guy are the worst. You should just disappear!]_

Those scathing words scratched Kuroko's throat raw, scraped his eyes dry. Every ache in his body seemed to melt away, overwhelmed by the buzzing in his ears.

He shook his head. This wasn't Kise. It couldn't be Kise. Kise didn't type like that, not even when he was in a hurry. Kise would never say something so brutal, so callous.

_But what if…_

Kuroko curled over, fighting back the bile.

All of a sudden, the world seemed too big.

**Scathing Prelude**

**/End**

* * *

Kise's sobs were horrible to listen to.

He was clasping Kuroko's hand and trying his very best not to let a sound escape his lips, but it was an impossible feat. Every few seconds, something shook his entire body, letting loose a gut-wrenching noise. Aomine stood next to where Kise kneeled, staring with an unfocused gaze at the motionless, silent figure in the bed.

Momoi was curled up in a chair, her face buried into her knees around which her arms were wrapped in a death-like hold. Murasakibara sat against the wall, holding nothing in his hands, his long, purple hair wisping around his face like a wreath of abysmal strings that hid his face.

It had been a day of such clear blue skies, just like Kuroko's hair and eyes, and yet this had to happen…

Death hung like a wraith of shadows, hiding in the corners, whispering outside the door. They could hear it scratching. Midorima kept a foot jammed against the door with his arms folded, as if that would do something to shield Kuroko from an intangible force. As if it wasn't too late.

"_Why…"_

It wasn't a question; it was begging.

Akashi closed his eyes, painfully aware of the way his chest rose and fell. He could feel the air rushing in, rushing out, rushing in, rushing out, could feel his heart thudding away busily. _Thump, thump, thump_. In, out. Tick tock.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

_Tock._

_Tick._

"_Yes, father," Akashi said, bowing his head. "I understand."_

"_Good, then," the older Akashi said. "Let's not have this conversation again, understood, Seijuuro?"_

"_Yes, father."_

"_You may leave."_

"_Yes, father."_

_The repetition nearly killed him. Akashi silently stepped out of his father's office _(opulent, severe, unforgiving)_ and into the elevator outside. He waved away the chauffeur that ran forward as soon as he reached the landing, opting instead for the bus running to the nearby park in Tokyo. _

_Silently so that nobody noticed, he leaned back into one of the wooden benches strewn messily throughout the park. Some boys and girls were throwing a ball around to his right; to his left, an empty swing set swayed forlornly in the wind. Back and forth, back and forth, never deviating from its destined path. _

_Something hit his feet. He looked down and saw the yellow ball with purple stars the children had been throwing around. He picked it up, beckoned a cautious child forward with a smile. _

"_Thank you!" the kid said. She was missing several baby teeth. "Ojii-san."_

_Akashi twitched, but tried to smile kindly—_a kind smile, what was a kind smile?—_at the child. The girl gave him a shy giggle before running off, her skirt flapping freely in the wind, giving Akashi an unbidden view of white panties._

_He sat there, watching the children with the swing set swaying behind him, elbows resting on his knees with his hands folded together. Something hungry rumbled in his chest. _

"_Akashi-kun?"_

_He turned._

"_Tetsuya? It's a surprise to see you here."_

"_I should be the one saying that," Kuroko said, slipping onto the bench beside Akashi. "You should be in Kyoto after all."_

"_I… had some business with my father," Akashi said. "Did you just leave school?"_

"_Yes," Kuroko said. "Basketball practice ended earlier than usual since Coach's father managed to set the house on fire somehow. I decided to take the long way home."_

_Akashi nodded. His mismatched eyes strayed over to the children playing a free-for-all with the ball. He could feel Kuroko's gaze on him._

"_I don't know whether to thank you or to curse you, Tetsuya," Akashi said. _

"_I'm sorry?"_

"_For making me lose. For rendering me no longer absolute."_

"_What do you mean?"_

"_I mean, I no longer have the right to say that I always win. That I am always right. I didn't realize it until now, but I have been leaning heavily on that principle of mine, all these years, ever since my father first told me that I would be inheriting his company."_

_The children were laughing. The swing set creaked. Kuroko was silent._

"_I relied on those words to reassure myself that I was on the right path. It became my duty to always be correct, to never be wrong. At first, I feared error; then it became something laughable as I grew older and more experienced. I scorned it because my fate was to win. I could never lose. And because I could never lose, I was never wrong. And because I was never wrong, I was right to follow my father's footsteps without question._

"_But, you broke that, Tetsuya. You shattered my role in life as the absolute emperor." Akashi held his hand up to the sun, grabbing its light. "Who knew that something so simple as losing could turn me on my head, make me lose sight of my duty. I was always right, Tetsuya, until you showed me wrong."_

_Kuroko was looking at him oddly. Then, to Akashi's surprise, Kuroko smiled. _

"_So Akashi-kun can also be stupid sometimes."_

"_Excuse me?"_

_Still with that barely perceptible curve on his lips, Kuroko said, "You… maybe it's time you free yourself from that cage you built around yourself, Akashi-kun."_

_Akashi's eyes narrowed. _

"_That principle of yours to be always right, it's like chains," Kuroko said. "You allow yourself only one path to walk on, and when you stray off of it, you're completely lost. You don't know what to do with yourself, just like now. Isn't that an awful way to live, Akashi-kun?"_

_Akashi had no answer. _

"_I should go now," Kuroko said, getting up. "It was good to see you."_

"_Wait, Tetsuya!"_

_Kuroko stopped, the thinnest thread of surprise lacing his stoic face. _

_With the swings tumbling behind him, Akashi asked, "Then, what should I do?"_

_Vulnerability._

"_Tell me what I should do."_

_Weakness._

_The children rolling in the dirt, the swing set groaning; the girl in the yellow dress laughing as she stained it green with the grass blades; the metal chains growing rusty from the rain; the boy in the cap throwing the ball up in the air, high, high, high, giving it a life of its own before it plummeted back to the ground, the swing seats floating feet off the ground, chained to the rods of the set; the children running free, the swings rocking back and forth for eternity._

"_Just do what you want to do," Kuroko said as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "That's what's most important."_

_Akashi was alone now, left to listen to the regularity of the clicks from the watch he'd been given for his seventeenth birthday._

_Tick_

_Tock_

_Tick_

Tock.

Tick.

Akashi walked to the other side of the bed. Kise was still crying, silently now, his head buried in the blankets, hand still clasped around Kuroko's. With his mismatched eyes, Akashi looked down upon Kuroko, stone-faced. His hand crept up and rested on Kuroko's cold forehead.

"I still don't know what I should do," he said in a voice so soft no one else could hear it. "Won't you wake up and tell me?"

"_Tell you? Was that a real question, Seijuuro?"_

"_Yes, father."_

"_You have never once in your seventeen years asked me such an outrageous question, Seijuuro. Why now of all times?"_

"_I've been thinking."_

"_Clearly, you have not been thinking as a member of the Akashi household should."_

"_Why must I?" Akashi said coldly. "Why must I be forced to live as an 'Akashi should' my entire life?"_

"_This is not how I've raised you to be, Seijuuro."_

"_You shouldn't have tried to raise me to be anything, father," Akashi said. _

"_What?"_

"_Why can't I choose the way I live?"_

"_Not that question again."_

"_Tell me."_

"_I said not that question again!"_

_Something snapped; his father had broken off the edge of his mahogany desk. It clattered to the ground. Breathing heavily, his father shook his head._

"_I apologize, Seijuuro, for letting my temper get out of hand. I should have seen from the start—it was your friends who caused you to doubt yourself, was it not?"_

_Akashi's eyes narrowed._

"_In that case… I think it's about time you started to go to school abroad. I'll send you to China next month—in May, as soon as I've found a suitable school."_

"_Father—"_

_The old man locked eyes with his son. "You need to be disciplined, Seijuuro. There will be no other options for you. Listen to me now, Seijuuro, and you will lead a comfortable life. It may seem unfair now, but in a few years, you will understand that I am only giving you the best of the best. So, listen to me."_

Akashi listened to the silence. Kise had finally fallen asleep from exhaustion. Aomine heaved him up and put him into a chair, covering him with a blanket he found in the room's only closet. Midorima was nodding off at his position in front of the door. The cold gleam from Murasakibara's violet eyes clashed with Akashi's before hiding away behind heavy eyelids.

_Akashi closed his eyes, letting his head fall back. He felt his hair pull away from his skin, waving gently in the wind. He was there again, in the park, but this time, he was alone. _

"_Akashi-kun!"_

_He turned and saw Tetsuya._

"_Akashi-kun, your text—it's not true, is it?"_

_Akashi turned a lazy eye to the phone Kuroko was holding in front of his face._

[My father is sending me to China]_ it read,_ [due to disobedience on my part. I wish to meet with you all one last time before I leave. How does May 19 sound? I hope to see you then.]

"_It's true," Akashi said curtly. He closed his eyes again._

_It was irrational, but he hated Kuroko Tetsuya at that moment. That single statement _just do what you want to do_—Kuroko didn't understand how much that statement itched at Akashi. It scratched at him until he was rubbed raw, all because the truth was—_

_When it came down to it, he didn't really know what he wanted to do._

_He was supposed to be right. He was supposed to win. He was supposed to live a life worthy of an Akashi. He was supposed to inherit his father's company._

_But did he want to do those things?_

_He didn't know._

_Half of him wanted to; the other half didn't._

_He despised the conflict within himself, who had always been certain._

"_This is all my fault," Kuroko said. Akashi snapped open his eyes, not liking the tone in Kuroko's voice—panic, self-blame. "This is my fault. Akashi-kun, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry."_

"_Tetsuya," Akashi said sharply. "What's wrong with you?"_

_Kuroko bit his next words, retreating. "I'm sorry. If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have to be going through these things."_

_Before Akashi could say another word, Kuroko seemingly vanished. Akashi was left alone to listen to the May wind whistling through the trees._

The May wind whistled through his hair as he stepped outside. He shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned against a pillar supporting the building—_like how Kuroko had supported them—_staring up at the bright blue sky. If he could take that sky and the sun, bundle up that life, and put it into Kuroko's eyes, he would—but he couldn't; he was only human. He was only human, despite the fact that he was an Akashi, a person who should be able to do anything without question, without fail.

He shook his head.

Who knew that a single loss could throw such imbalance into his life?

"_Who knew Akashicchi just wanted to take us out for lunch?" Kise sang with a hand over his stomach. _

"_It's good to do these things once in a while," Akashi said. "To build and keep connections."_

"_Ah, when you say it that way, it seems so calculating," Kise pouted. _

_Akashi let a smile lift his lips. "Well__…" he hesitated for a split second, lifting his eyes to the sky. "It was something I wanted to do, so I did it."_

_Kise, not understanding the meaning behind Akashi's words, grinned. "It was good to see you one last time. I can't believe your father… And just after the start of third year, too."_

_The bus rumbled to a stop and dispensed its passengers. The six of them began walking along the side of the street, loosely coagulated into one moving mass._

"_My father has always been strict and has always acted in the way he sees most beneficial towards my existence," Akashi said calmly. "I will make the most I can out of this trip to China."_

"_If you say so…" Kise said, unconvinced. "Ah, but too bad Kurokocchi couldn't come. I wonder what came up?"_

"_It would have been nice to see him," Momoi said. "I haven't met up with him since his mother's funeral."_

"_Tetsu's life has been really shitty these days, hasn't it," Aomine grumbled._

"_Hey…" Kise said, shading his eyes. He pointed excitedly up at a lone figure at the top of the hill they were about to walk up. "Isn't that Kurokocchi up there?"_

* * *

**Roaring Prelude (Penultimate)**

**/Begin**

"…and I bring the money home, and you can't even do _this_ much? I loved you because I thought you were capable, but now I'm not so sure."

"I said I was _sorry!"_

"Sorry doesn't cut it. You and that worthless son of yours—I wish I'd never met you. Life would have been so much better with Kyoko—you and your family tricked me into marrying you. The worst decision of my life."

"I-I'm sorry…"

"What did I say? Sorry doesn't cut it. If you're sorry, then leave. It'll be one less mouth to feed in this shitty household. What? Worried about what other people will think of you if you leave? I didn't know you could care. Don't worry; I'm sure they all whisper about you behind your back already—about how we're dirt poor, how you wear the same clothes all the time, how you can't get the money to take your son out for his birthday.

"And how you can't even raise your son properly! I kept working for you two because I thought that maybe Tetsuya would get a scholarship for basketball and be able to go to college without paying for tuition—but then he went and got his wrist broken, so there goes _that_ hope out the window. Because of him and because of you, I've been leading this shitty life… how does that feel? Knowing you've ruined another person's future?"

"Honey…"

"Don't call me that. You don't have the right."

Kuroko slipped out of the house, unnoticed, into the dusty blue sky. He came back the next day after spending that night at Ichiru's house, sharing a quiet dinner with him.

The house was eerily quiet. The boards creaked under his weight, and there was a stiffness in the air he was unfamiliar with. A faint stench of liquor stung his nose. Feeling uneasy, he followed the scent upstairs, then finally to the attic. The smell was unbearable. He flicked on the lights.

He would have screamed had he not been so choked up with fright to the point of being paralyzed. He didn't want to believe what he was seeing, yet he could not tear his eyes away.

His mother's toes swung two feet off the ground and the rope above her swayed gently in a rocking lullaby that harmonized with the groans of the roof.

The funeral was quick but not quiet. It was a neighborhood scandal everybody liked to talk about. His father wept (_fake tears)_; Kuroko was too stunned to cry_ (what an ungrateful son)_. He could only watch with hot, dry eyes they carried his mother away and cremated her, sending back her ashes in an urn that was mailed away to her family. After that, his father said only one sentence to him; then he never spoke to his son again.

"_This is your fault, you know."_

Kuroko skipped school for a week. When he returned, it was a change so subtle, and he blended in with the scenery so well that hardly anyone noticed his return. But then again, hardly anyone noticed his absence in the first place. Ichiru called him a couple of times, but he never answered; he stayed out after school until late at night when he knew his father was sleeping. He returned to the house only to have a little dinner, drink some water, sleep a few hours. The rest of the time, he went without food, without comfort.

He was doing alright, Kuroko reassured himself. Things would get better.

The school year ended in early April. Kiyoshi, Hyuuga, and the rest graduated with worried faces. Kuroko could still see them keeping an eye out for him, but he clung to the shadows. He wanted to say goodbye, thank you for everything, but didn't want to face them. Didn't want to have to lie to answer their questions. Didn't want to risk something bad happening to them. And besides, what could they do if he'd told them? He'd tried telling Ichiru, but the man came to him during school one day, looking somber and morose, and told Kuroko that Otori had threatened to end his adoptive father's life. Ichiru couldn't do anything except worry for Kuroko now. What could anyone else do? So, he turned his face away, pulled out a book, and looked at the words. The book was upside-down.

Once, he'd dared to let his feet lead him to the gymnasium, where he knew the third-years (Kagami, Furihata) would be practicing along with the underclassmen. It was empty; it seemed as if no one had arrived yet. The basketball cart was tucked away with the orange balls threatening to roll over the top and bounce on the floor. The hoops were stationed in the same places as they had always been. The floor gleamed with the same shine. Kuroko put a hand against the door frame, looking into a world he'd abandoned with an ache in his chest.

"Kuroko?"

He froze and spun around. Kagami was standing at the end of the hallway, and because he was standing with his back to the light, his face was indiscernible, a dark shadow cutting into the white light.

"Kuroko, is that you?"

Kagami stepped forward in disbelief. Kuroko took a step back.

"Wait! Damn it!"

He turned around and swiftly melted away.

_It'll be okay._

Then, Akashi sent out that text to the entire Generation of Miracles, saying that his father would be shipping him away to China for a year due to disobedience. For some reason, the text on that cell phone screen kept blurring up; tears kept leaking from Kuroko's eyes. This was his fault. It was his fault that Akashi had to leave. His fault.

_Shh_, he tried to tell himself. _It's not your fault. Don't think like this. Things will get better._

Then, that teacher had Kuroko bring him to his shabby house, and finally, Kuroko's last place was shattered.

His bed was defiled. He could no longer call that place a home. His last place where he'd grown up with his mother and father was dirty. Soiled. Like him. He no longer felt safe in this bed. He didn't feel safe anywhere. He looked at the dirty sheets blankly, without seeing, before folding them up mechanically and throwing them into the trash. But that was a waste of money, so he pulled them back out again and washed them by hand. Washed them again. Washed them until his hands were bleeding. Still, he stared blankly. Unbidden tears pooled in his eyes as he felt those hands. Those lips. Heard that voice. Relived everything. His stomach twisted. Again and again. Like how he was washing those sheets again and again. They wouldn't be clean, though. They wouldn't ever be clean again. Now they were staining pink. He was only soiling them further. A waste. What a waste. He was a waste. He pulled his hands from the water and looked down, watching the blood collect and mix with the water. He drained the bathtub in which he'd washed the sheets, pulled them out, hung them to dry.

For some reason, the teacher followed him home again the next day. Sticky, hot, filthy. Until Kuroko no longer cared anymore. No longer cared about the pain. No longer cared. When the teacher left, he gathered the sheets up again and washed them a final time. He waited for them to dry, then made his bed. He stopped in the middle of his room and stared blankly. There was an odd roaring in his ears that wouldn't stop.

He smiled.

It was alright. He was alright.

It was going to be alright.

His smile blistered.

He waited for the day to come. May 19, the day when everyone else would be meeting on the other side of Tokyo. There would be slim to no chance of running into them if things went right. On any other day, he could run into Kise, Aomine, or Midorima, so yes, he decided, May 19 was the best day to do it.

The sun crawled up the sky, dragging itself out of the horizon like a great beast rising from the sea. Kuroko hadn't slept. Didn't want to sleep. He'd lain there on the floor next to his perfectly made bed, staring into darkness, feeling oddly calm. Memories flashed through his mind of everything that had happened in the past year, but oddly, he didn't mind. Not anymore.

With shaking hands, he wrote a small note _(Thank you. Goodbye.)_ in case anyone bothered to search his room. He cried again, suddenly afraid, suddenly sorry for all that he had done, was doing, was about to do. Did he really want to cause trouble for everyone? Was there really nothing worth living for?

But, it was for the best. He didn't want to feel so unbearably disgusting anymore. He didn't want to bother his father anymore. He didn't want to run the risk of failing his friends again.

They'd all be better without him.

Midorima's words rang in his head. Selfish.

_I'm sorry for being selfish._

He was taking his bike up the hill with slow steps, staring blankly.

_I'm sorry for being so weak._

He lifted his eyes.

_I'm sorry for causing you all so much trouble._

It was a day of such clear blue skies that it was hard to believe that he was about to soil it.

_I'm sorry for being so filthy. _

He mounted his bike. It was such an ordinary day. The blood rushing in his head drowned out all other sounds, but he knew that people were living their lives as usual. And they would continue living their lives as usual. One Kuroko Tetsuya missing from the world would not tip its balance. One drop of rain caught from the skies would not cause the roaring river to go dry.

_I'm sorry._

_But, it's okay, now._

In a few moments, his pain would be gone. In a few moments, he would never be able to be a bother to anyone ever again.

It would be an accident. No one would be blamed. It might be a bit of work for people to clean up (_I'm sorry), _but after that he would never cause trouble for anyone.

He felt everything in a strange haze. These were his final moments. Someone was cutting his or her lawn nearby; he could smell the scent of freshly mown grass. Hear the birds in the air, the voices of the people, the engines of the cars. Feel the brakes of his bicycle creak, the wind in his hair. Taste blood in his mouth. See the skies so clear and blue.

He dove.

He heard the wind roaring in his ears. Felt it resisting his body. Trying to hold him back. But he was already diving towards the intersection at breakneck speed. There was no time to think.

Now, there was only sound.

Now, there was only pain.

Now, there was only darkness.

Now

There

Was

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Nothing

**Roaring Prelude**

**/end**

* * *

_The end!_

…

_Just kidding. _

_That was the last of the preludes. All the preludes were written weeks ago in case I needed something to post during a long hiatus in updates. Luckily, that didn't need to happen!_

_And in case you missed it at the top of the page, everything in this chapter is set in the past._

_Sorry for not clearing up on Kuroko this chapter... next chapter, though, next chapter. Sorry if Akashi's bit also was a little dull; I figured he needed to have his say sooner or later._

_If you have any questions/anything you'd like to see, now is the time to ask. I'll be trying to clear everything up and tying loose ends together in the next chapter since, well—it's most likely going to be the last (unless you guys have a lot of questions or something)._

_BY THE WAY. THE NEW CHAPTER OF KNB. CAN I JUST SAY THAT WAS ALMOST TOO MANY FEELS?_

_Thanks for your support as always! Have a nice day :)_

* * *

**Review Replies** (because I am shamefully horrible at keeping up with replies. These are shorter than they would be if they were actual messages, mainly because I don't want to take up too much space. I won't do this again!)

**XxBlacktears27xX:** No, thank you! Keep strong :)

**GunGun:** *author-san pumps fist in air for making so many people cry* Thanks for the review!

**kurie-tibiti:** Thank you (not sure if it's a compliment, but I'll take it as such)! I'm glad that my writing style is memorable :)

**TomAndJerry:** hahaha, you'll see what happens to Kuroko next chapter :)

** .Pearl**: :x

**Kurosaki Yukia:** Hope this was a fast enough update :) Thanks, as always!

**racerabbit:** haha, I know, but the prelude had to come ;n; Momoi is amazing; it's the least I could do for her to portray her as STRONG. Glad you saw the AoMo moment; however, that's probably as romantic as the story will ever get XD And, hehe, nice observational skills... ;) Thanks, as always :)

**CrimsonQueen24:** Thanks for letting me know! It's really a relief to know people thought Momoi came out fine :) I know, I am actually horrible ._. And this chapter was probably no help, either XD

**Guest:** LOL I'm sorry! But if I'm terrible, what about Fujimaki? He leaves us on cliffhangers and sobbing every week... And, thanks :)

**thecoldforest:** It's not the end! Don't give up hope even if it may or may not be crushed (hehe). Thanks, as always :)

**Sora Matasuki** and **LitaRicaChan**: (since you both essentially said the same thing) This chapter probably was no help, sorry! Next chapter will definitely say what happened to Kuroko, though.

**Rabunyan: **Thanks and sorry for making you cry _

**Guester:** Glad to hear you say that :) Otori really should die in a fire... hm... Haha, thanks as always! :)


End file.
